Shintenshin
by Sleyman
Summary: A mission, a betrayal, a chance encounter. Ino has lived her life amongst friends in Konoha- Kimimaro has lived a life of solitude in the shadow of Kumogakure. What will happen when fate brings two very different people together? KimixIno. T for Tentative
1. Revolution

Author's Notes: Well, now. I wrote me another story. Hopefully, this one won't die like Jyuuken did, but we'll see. This is set, say, three years after the events of Season I, with the exception of Kimimaro never getting mixed up with Orochimaru. Hourai and random ANBU guy, I made up.

**Disclaimer: I do not own the series Naruto, the manga, the characters, the official merchandise, or poorly-made bootleg merchandise. So don't come crying to me when you find out that plushie isn't the genuine article, pal…  
What was I talking about?**

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It had been a straightforward mission. "Had" being the operative word. Investigate the suspicious movement of Kirigakure shinobi believed to be operating around Oto no Kuni and Kaminari no Kuni, ascertain whether or not they are trying to incite conflict between Kaminari no Kuni and Hi no Kuni and return to Konohagakure with the information. Ino, along with a Konohagakure ANBU member and an envoy from Kumogakure, had headed out nearly a month ago.

That was where it had all started going wrong.

* * *

Ino burst through the dense bushes, adrenaline making her ignore the scratching, rain-laden branches that assailed her. On a hunch, she ducked as she passed a tree. Kunai, darts and shuriken zipped over her head, shredding leaves and thudding into wood. The contingent of Kirigakure shinobi had been haunting them for almost a week now, forcing them deeper and deeper inside Kaminari territory and battering them with frequent ghosting assaults.

She had never really gotten a chance to learn about her teammates. The ANBU guy had never talked much- and never would again. They had caught him by surprise the day before. She had seen him briefly, impaled halfway up a tree by his own sword with his mask in pieces on the ground. Somehow, he had managed to say something before he died, though she had been too far away to hear. She didn't think she'd ever be able to forget that face, bloodied and contorted in pain and effort even as the life drained from behind it. She had run. She had no choice.

After that, the attacks had changed. With only two targets to deal with now, the attacks were becoming more focussed and persistent. They were confident. Ino wasn't. It was a nightmare situation to be in.

Eventually, the Kirigakure assault did fade away, as it always did, and Ino had a chance to catch her breath. She huddled in the hollow of a tree, trying to keep out of the rain and keep her back to something. She could only be attacked from a few directions here. She hadn't noticed that she was shaking violently until then. That wasn't good, the cold was getting to her. She crossed her arms and tried to rub some warmth into her biceps, to little effect.

'Yamanaka-san!' a voice hissed from some distance to her right. Her hand went for her kunai pouch instinctively, before she realised that it was the voice of Kamana Hourai, the Kumogakure envoy. He had been sent by the Raikage as a show of goodwill, and an indication that he was aware of outside influence near his borders. Ino didn't like him much. He wasn't especially unlikeable, but she just hadn't taken to him.

'Are you alright, Yamanaka?' he asked, rushing over when she made her presence known. She must have looked as bad as she felt, since he was clearly concerned. But she couldn't just sit here, they had to keep moving.

'I'm fine,' she assured him, which apparently did not convince him in the slightest. She rose unsteadily and fought off a wave of dizziness. She was getting a fever now. 'We have to reach the village.'

'It's fine, Yamanaka,' he said carefully 'you've done enough.' It took her a moment to realise that he hadn't said the second part in a particularly friendly way. And, suddenly, she knew what the ANBU guy had said. She wasn't much good at lip-reading, but she knew.

"_Don't trust him!"_

Her eyes widened as the implications of this dawned on her, and Hourai took this as his queue. 'I'm sorry.' The knife sunk into her shoulder before she knew what was happening. Ino let out a scream, which was interrupted as she was thrown to the ground hard.

'But I can't let you complete your mission. This country _must_ change.' He punctuated the end of his sentence by wrenching the knife out of Ino's shoulder. 'You've suffered enough already,' he tapped the knife on her cheek, staining it with blood. 'But I'll have to ask you to suffer a little longer. I don't think I can bring myself to kill a woman, so just bear it for a while. Until you bleed out.'

His business concluded, he leapt onto a tree branch, took one last, agonised glance at Ino, and vanished into the wind and the rain.

* * *

Swirling consciousness assailed Ino, supplying her with pain, the sensation of moving and staying still at the same time, and cold numbness. Her vision swam for a moment, giving her the urge to vomit. She tried raising her head, on a whim. Some of her long hair was stuck underneath her, and pulled uncomfortably at the back of her head, but she managed to lift it despite this. She managed to keep it aloft for all of three juddering seconds before strength fled her and her head flopped to the ground lamely.

Fighting off the wave of nausea this caused and trying to ignore the raindrops falling into her eyes, she passed out again. Maybe for the last time.

To her surprise, she did regain consciousness again. To her much greater surprise, she was not alone. A pale, lithe man, shrouded in a long brown cloak and screened from the rain by a large umbrella stood over her. The spill from the umbrella was cascading onto her hair, further mixing it with the mud she lay on.

The man stared at her. The only visible part of his face- his eyes- were icy green, with red underlines and seemed to regard her with the same level of compassion as one might regard a rodent, or fruit platter. It was the most wholly unsettling look she had ever seen. But that might have just been the delirium talking.

The figure took a wet step around her, trying to see her from another angle. Trying to decide whether she was worth bothering with. Oddly enough, she didn't trust him to make the right choice on the matter of her life, and decided to try and convince him.

'…Uh…a…' her throat didn't seem to work very well. Her rasping did seem to catch the man's attention, however. He leant down and studied her more closely. His expression did not change. She tried her best to smile, but only managed a weak hint of joy. One of the man's eyebrows raised in a carefully measured fraction of bemusement. He straightened up and took another step around her.

Ino was becoming terrified that he was fast approaching the decision to leave her there. She had to do something. She couldn't just die out here like this. She had to at least report the situation to Kumogakure, if not Konoha. She had to see her friends and family again.

As if to confirm her fears, the silent man turned to leave. Moving her arm with willpower alone, she reached out and clutched the hem of the man's cloak. He paused mid-step as the mantle was tugged away from the left side of his face and glanced down at her. She was out again, probably from the shock of moving her right arm. Her fingers still mingled with the fabric of his cloak.

Moving laboriously, as though fighting against his better judgement, he cast his umbrella aside and lifted the woman carefully off the ground. This was not something he was accustomed to doing, so he had some trouble figuring out how to support her head and stop her arms flailing backwards, but he managed it.

She was deathly pale, so cold she had stopped shivering, and lighter than she should have been, by any reckoning. Watery mud glued much of her hair into a lank mess, and there were dark shadows under her teal eyes which had gazed imploringly at him minutes before. And he realised that she was crying.

Trying to shelter her from the rain as best he could with his cloak, he made his way through the forest which had been his home for the last six years.


	2. Stability

Author's Notes: I'm really liking this whole "writing" thing. More than usual, anyway. Chapter comments: LOL.

**Disclaimer: What little I own does not include the series Naruto or the characters pertaining to said series. Bite me.**

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The first thing Ino noticed when she next woke up was that she was in a bed. The fact that she was naked was a minor concern when she realised that she was alive. There was probably a good reason for that, anyway. She hoped.

Aside from being alive, naked and in a bed, all she could perceive in her groggy half-consciousness was pain. A splitting headache stabbed at the inside of her skull, and the various wounds on her body throbbed viciously. The wound on her shoulder inexorably drew her attention. She had been pretty sure that the wound had been fatal, but it seemed that she had been mistaken. Hourai, probably afflicted with pity for her, must not have struck with full force, and narrowly avoided cutting the Axillary artery. That must have been what happened, otherwise she wouldn't have lived long enough for a passing stranger to…

Her last bleary memories snapped back into focus, inflaming her headache. Someone had saved her. A man who had looked down at her with cold eyes, and hadn't seemed too interested in helping her. And now, she reminded herself, she was naked in a bed. Various scenarios unfolded in her muddled mind. Like her being so overjoyed at being alive and delirious from fever caused her to get into a compromising situation and- she stopped imagining. That was just a little too far-fetched. She was injured, and had probably been asleep for days. Then maybe when she was asleep, he- it was around that point that she forced her imagination to stop working. Now was the time to be calm.

It felt like she had been carefully bandaged, but not amazingly well. This did go some way to explain why she had been stripped. She would have liked to have been given something else to wear, but perhaps she shouldn't have worried about it too much. There was bound to be a reason. She should be more grateful in this situation, right?

She tried to focus on her surroundings. It didn't work. The comforting warmth of the air suggested that she was in a building of some kind, and it seemed like there was a fire going somewhere, but she just couldn't focus properly. Too weak… Too groggy…

* * *

_She was dreaming. She could tell it was a dream, since she remembered this scene from years before. It was a sad memory, and she didn't want to remember it. But something was different, something nagging at the back of her mind. In fact, something was pulling at the back of her head. A sensation of wetness. She reached up and felt her hair. Her hand came away covered in blood. It covered her, head to toe. Her blood. And something pulling. Dragging her by the back of her skull. She tried to look around, and saw a grim face. An angel of death, taking her away._

Ino woke with a start. She was back in the room with the bed, and her, and- she tried to get her thoughts sorted out. There was the sound of dripping water, and her hair felt wet. Something was indeed pulling gently at the back of her scalp. She fought off the urge to panic, and looked around wildly. This time her eyes did focus, and they found a grim face. Then her thoughts knotted horribly.

The face, as it happened, belonged to the man that she had seen in the forest. His silver-grey hair fell across his shoulders, and he had a slightly placid expression on his face. It seemed like he had been…cleaning her hair. He had paused in his work when he noticed that she was awake. Ino sighed in relief. Dreams could be really strange sometimes.

'…What…?' she said breathlessly. She still wasn't feeling so good. The man didn't respond. He did, however, resume the work of cleaning the mud out of her hair. He brought a ladleful of warm water to her brow and carefully trickled its contents into her hair. It was hanging off the end of the bed, and he gently and slowly combed the water through it. It felt…pretty good, actually. Every time he found a tangle, the combing would stop and the tangle would be undone hair by hair, then combed clean. It was a long, methodical process, but she felt that her hair had never been paid so much attention before.

It took some time before the man was satisfied that her hair was properly clean. He dried it just as carefully with a small hand towel, and then moved Ino back into a more comfortable position on the bed. She couldn't say that this experience was particularly pleasant, but the man touched her surely, and without sign of embarrassment. Somehow, that made her feel as though there was nothing particularly bad about the fact that he had seen her naked. Her pride was still intact. Though it did feel as though she wasn't being acknowledged as a woman.

The man disappeared for a minute, before reappearing with a glass of water. He helped raise her head enough to drink. The water, almost painfully, made her realise how hungry she was. How long had it been since she last ate? Recognising the look on her face, or hearing the painful gurgling of her stomach, the man disappeared a second time. When he reappeared, he had a bowl. The way he carried it suggested that it was some kind of soup. He set it down on a small table by the bed and went to get the chair he had been using when he cleaned her hair.

No. She did not want to be fed. Having someone wash her hair was fine, but she drew the line at being fed. That, even more than barely being able to move, would make her feel helpless. And that was not what she needed right now. Gathering the sheets at her collar with her left hand, she tried to sit up. Fighting to ignore the pain stabbing at her from various places on her body and its desire to remain horizontal, she gradually lifted herself a few inches.

Her ascent was halted by a hand against her chest. Her mouth opened, but she was too outraged to say anything. The man, totally unabashed, pushed her flat with the tiniest press of his fingers.

'You have a fever' he said, matter-of-factly. It was true that she was feeling a little…huh? For some reason, she had an inordinate amount of trouble comprehending that he had just spoken. His voice was much deeper and smoother than she would have expected. True, it was flat and carried about as much emotion as an eel, but something about it…well, spoke to her. Like those few words had hidden meanings. Like "so don't move around so much," or "don't cause me any more trouble," or "sick people should behave like sick people."

He put his hand to her forehead to further demonstrate his point. His hand, still warm from carrying the soup, was noticeably cooler than her own skin. But she wasn't sweating and didn't feel uncomfortable. Not necessarily a good sign.

Thoughts of him touching her inappropriately completely banished, she accepted the first spoonful of soup in a dreamy stupor. It was pretty good soup, too. It didn't seem like it had any seasonings, but that made the flavour of the fish- which was the main ingredient- more pronounced, and seem more complex. She happily accepted a second and third spoonful.

Once she had finished the soup, she felt better. It did feel good to have some kind of food in her stomach. It made her feel fuzzy and drowsy. The man dabbed a few drops of soup and crumbs of fish off her face. As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered if he had cleaned the rest of her body.

Probably best that she didn't know the answer.

* * *

Kimimaro sat and stared at the sleeping woman. He felt that there was a reason, but for the life of him couldn't figure out why on earth he had decided to pick her up.

The desire to feel needed for something other than his ability to kill? Lust? Desire for human contact which didn't involve killing or the planning of killing? Somehow, nothing seemed to explain it.

He had seen the face of dying men and women countless times. Faces filled with agony and regret. On occasion, he had felt pity for them, but he had never helped one of them before. What was so different about her?

She was from Konohagakure no Sato, he recognised the symbol on her forehead protector. That, in and of itself, wasn't significant. Her hair was well-kempt- they had that in common- but he doubted something so trivial would have influenced him. He tilted his head, puzzling over the matter.

Treating her had been…odd. He knew the basics, but he was no medic. Bandaging himself was the extent of his usual treatments. If nothing else, it had been a learning experience. He had known that taking wet clothes off was harder than taking off dry clothes, but taking wet clothes off an unconscious person was something else altogether.

She was attractive, too. Her skin was an unhealthy pale grey, her facial features wasted away somewhat, but she was still a gorgeous specimen. But treating her as such would be impolite, given her situation. Honestly, he was going to excessive lengths to keep her comfortable. Hm.

This was becoming a puzzle to him- why he was bringing someone back from the verge of death. Puzzles existed to be solved. But it could wait.

He had work to do.


	3. Upheaval

Author's Notes: special thanks to Demonic Angel Clone and for their reviews, which encouraged me to write despite being too damn busy lately. Apologies for the delayed uploading. My life has been "_interesting_" lately.

**Disclaimer: First thing I'd do if I did own Naruto or any of the affiliated characters would be to buy a car. I need a car. Or Catbus.**

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Being the bloodstained right hand of a power-hungry feudal lord wasn't such a bad job. It kept him busy, a roof over his head, food on the table, and away from the squabbling of the Hidden Villages. It did put him right in the middle of squabbling feudal lords, but they were more easily intimidated, and as easy to kill as mice. Shinobi tended to be much more wilful and stubborn, like the woman he had found in the forest.

With Kimimaro as a political weapon, much could be accomplished in a small amount of time, but not without catching the attention of the Raikage. Intervention by Kumogakure would mean nothing but trouble for a feudal lord, and Kimimaro was unlikely to be able to protect his life. Discretion was in order.

From intelligence gathered, there was some kind of revolution in the works. Details were sketchy, but it seemed that Kumogakure no Sato and/or Kirigakure no Sato were involved. This would, undoubtedly, interfere with his patron's plans of the carefully timed "accidental" deaths of his political rivals. Whether this interference would be beneficial or not was not certain, but it was best to assume not. But, at the same time, it would be dangerous to eliminate the Kirigakure no Sato shinobi, as it would undoubtedly arrest the attention of Kumogakure no Sato.

But that was a consideration for later. Now, he needed to focus on the task at hand. A hand-carriage bobbed smoothly down the road, the carriers quietly grunting in time to keep their rhythm smooth, and an armed guard following closely. Warriors, but not shinobi.

With a sound that would probably unsettle anyone else, a protrusion of bone slowly extended from the palm of Kimimaro's right hand. Once it had extended to his satisfaction, he swung his arm, easily re-familiarising himself with the adjusted weight and balance of his arm, which he knew all too well. The sound of the bone whistling through air was pleasing.

He moved.

* * *

Ino drifted awake, roused by the chirping of a bird somewhere outside. There was a lot more light in the room than she remembered seeing before. It seemed like morning. And she needed to use the bathroom.

It felt like her fever had gone down some, and she felt much stronger than the last time she was awake. It still hurt to move, but she _could_ move. Bracing herself for the pain, she sat up. It hurt. And it took a while, but she managed it. She eased her legs across the edge of the bed, wincing as a superficial wound on her left thigh and right calf flared. She tested her legs on the floor, guessing that they could support her weight, and carefully rose to her feet.

The dizziness and nausea hit her like a sledgehammer, sending her sprawling to the ground clutching her head. The feeling was so intense that she was tempted to hit her head on the floor repeatedly to make it feel better. And the fact that she was laying down again didn't help much. She felt sick.

The thought that there might not _be_ a bathroom to be sick in never even occurred to her. Moving shakily on hands and knees, she went off in a random direction, hoping for the best. She managed to find a corner of the room. No bathroom there. She followed a wall until she found an edge, which turned out to be a doorframe, and found herself in a short hallway. The second room she found appeared to be what she was after. She shuddered her way in and found the sink. She hauled herself up to it and retched. Not even bile would come up but the retching continued, unperturbed.

It was a few agonising minutes before the retching stopped, and she was left slumped against a wall, shaking and trying to withstand the pain of her screaming stomach muscles. Once she could move again, she went about the next order of business.

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Kimimaro wound his way through the forest, back to his home. He quite liked it, actually. His benefactor had gone to some trouble to create a house which was both out of the way _and_ supported modern comforts like plumbing and electricity. Kimimaro didn't like electrical lights, or anything else fuelled by the esoteric force. He didn't mind the water though.

The worst part of his job, he reflected, was the blood. No matter how cleanly he hit, or slashed or stabbed, there was just no getting away from it. His right side had taken the worst of it this morning. A violent gash of red stood out against the white of his shirt and his fair skin. Running water helped with that, a bit. Blood was stubborn, though, and always seemed to leave a stain. Wearing black would have ended this problem, but he was opposed to wearing black on principle.

He came to his house, a few kilometres outside a small village which fell under his employer's authority, and let himself inside. He stripped off the bloodied shirt and dropped it in the hall. He had other shirts- this one was an acceptable loss. Food. He wanted food… but that could wait for a while.

He stopped at the end of the hall. The injured woman was laying face-down on the floor of the main room, making uncomfortable noises. What was she doing?

A few of her wounds had opened up, by the look of it, and some of her bandages were coming undone. All of them were old and yellowed, so it was about time he changed them.

Quietly surprised that she had recovered enough to move around already, he made his way over to her. She protested at being carried back to the bedroom, trying to cover herself up as she did so. Not that there was much she could do about it, she couldn't even get there by herself. As soon as she was on the bed she twisted in what must have been a hugely painful way, and tried to roll the sheets over herself.

'Listen…you,' she started 'I think I need to explain a few things to you. About how to treat people,' she glared at him, darkly hinting at what might come to pass. Rather than rebuff, or even concede this point, Kimimaro pulled the sheets off her before she could stop him. 'Hna…!' she covered herself with her hands again. Ignoring her, he opened a drawer on the bedside table and took out several rolls of bandages.

'I'll do it myself!' she snapped, feebly trying to snatch one of the bandages from him. She missed, but she had a look in her eye that said she was going to resist as strongly as she could. Fighting claw-and-tooth, as it were.

'You can't reach your shoulder.' At his words she stopped talking, and stared at him with an odd look on her face. Her guard was down now. He guided her into a sitting position on one side of the bed, sat behind her and started undoing the bandages which were almost falling off on their own by now. She even gave him a few quiet tips about applying bandages.

* * *

As the bandages fell away Ino was once again very conscious of the fact that she was almost completely naked in the presence of a man. A man stripped to the waist, she reminded herself. With uniformly fair skin and tightly coiled muscles over a wide frame and… what was she thinking about at a time like this? Such thought had to stop _now._

His hands worked dexterously, but he didn't wrap the bandages tight enough. Maybe because he was afraid of wrapping them too tightly and cutting off circulation, or because he had never been taught how to properly. She advised him to wrap the more tightly, which he did. He seemed like a good listener, if not a sparkling conversationalist.

It seemed like he really was treating her lightly. He was still, as ever, unmindful of her gender and uninterested in her femininity. It was more than a little mortifying, but he was only trying to help. Awkward though he was, he was sweet in that very limited way. She almost wished he would blush and look away from her. Even if only to feel like it wasn't her that should be embarrassed.

What was she doing? Saying she could wrap her own bandages when she barely had enough strength to swat at a fly. Cringing and trying to hide like a toddler from a dentist. Telling him off for treating her indifferently. She was starting to feel like a complete fool.

At a time like this she should be trying not to impose herself on him too much. He had saved her, maybe just on a whim, but he seemed committed to seeing it through now. It would be horrible to make him regret it. She sighed and helped him loop a bandage around her waist. All-up, she had three light cuts, four deep cuts, a stab wound in her shoulder, and numerous scrapes and bruises. Some of them would probably leave scars.

She wondered how her back looked. She didn't think she had any scars on her back, but she wasn't too sure. She couldn't remember every injury she had ever suffered. She thought briefly about asking the man if there were any, before deciding against it. She was _naked_, she reminded herself once again. And he was half-_naked._ Probably not the best time for provocative questions. Besides, she was injured. She was in no condition to be…with a man…

Sometimes she just wanted to strangle that part of her mind.

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Bandaging complete, Kimimaro gave the woman back the sheets, got a clean shirt, and headed for the kitchen. She had been surprisingly cooperative, after her initial defiance. Showing a firm hand seemed to have worked.

He was out of fish broth, but the woman could probably manage rice or millet or vegetables, or…something. The question was, what did he have on hand? Precious little, it seemed. He was going to have to go into town. Hmm, he needed to find some women's clothes as well. The clothes she had on when he found her were…unserviceable. Bloodstained, torn, worn, encrusted with mud. They were well and truly write-offs. He could probably use them as a reference, so he wouldn't need to be careful about showing them to the tailor- it was unlikely that the people who had attacked her would be lurking around a town as small as this. Anybody would notice their presence.

He had a few apples left, they had that look that apples tend to get just before they start to dry out, but they were still fine to eat. They weren't much to look at, however, so he peeled and cut them into slices and arranged them neatly on a plate. A proper meal could wait for a few hours, but he should at least feed her something for breakfast, late or not.

He swept back into the bedroom, armed with apple slices and placed them on the bedside table wordlessly. She looked at him with a complicated expression which changed as he watched. She must have been hungry, since she ate a slice of apple thoughtfully before he even left the room. It was good that she was eating. He was forgetting that she had been unconscious until yesterday. The apple would probably be more than enough for breakfast. But he was still hungry.

Along with groceries…plus clothes…he had enough money on him to pay for everything. He could afford to get himself a meal while he was there, too. It had been a while since he ate anything he hadn't made himself.

He went to the front door. He wasn't wearing a shirt. He went back to the kitchen, got the shirt from where he had left it on the bench and put it on. He didn't so much sneak a glance, as he did _happen_ to catch a glance at the woman. She had watched him go past, and had one of those looks he couldn't identify again.


	4. Solidarity

Please pardon my _INEXCUSABLE DELAY_. And thank you again to you reviewers, without whom I probably would have taken a fair bit longer. I thank you so much- that we shall now fight with knives.

**Disclaimer: Gen, Shu, Hourai, Hourai's minions, and Haruko are the work of my imagination. Other characters (like, mebbe, Ino and Kimimaro) are pwnd by Kishimoto Masashi. If you wanna argue about that, I'm afraid- nay, TERRIFIED that I shall be forced to bite your face off.**

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Gen Nerai sat behind the counter of his shop, fanning himself. It wasn't a hot day but Gen was the larger sort of man, who tend to sweat at all times regardless of air temperature.

Living and working in a one-horse town like this gave you plenty of time to sit and think. His neighbour, Shu, was expecting piglets soon. No change since last week, but it was only a matter of time.

His shop was the best, and therefore _only_ tailor in the area. People came to him for clothes. And shoes. He claimed to be able to make any kind of clothing, which was fine, since the local folks didn't go for anything too fancy most of the time.

Gen sighed heavily and waved the fan at the counter, sending a few specs of dust sailing through the air. And then, someone he didn't expect to see walked in. True enough, he never expected to see Kimimaro about. Quiet lad, kept to himself. Never got drunk and caused trouble like the other youngsters. Good customer too. Liked to keep himself looking snappy, he guessed. Always paid up-front, proper like.

'Ah, Kimimaro-kun' he said, raising himself to his feet to greet his favourite customer. 'How are you? Taking care of yourself, I hope. It's been a while, come in, have some tea.'

'Another day. I'm in a hurry.'

'You should have thought about that before you came here, then. Eh? You expected to come see ol' Gen and not have him talk your ears off?'

Kimimaro sighed. 'Alright. I apologise.' Resigned to his fate, he joined Gen at a small table deeper into the shop, in amongst the piles of cloth and racks of coats and set down his bags carefully.

'Nah, don't sweat it. I recon I can guess what's eating you,' Gen said sagely, pouring cups of tea with one hand and fanning himself vigorously with the other. He must have had a pot on hand just in case somebody came by. Kimimaro sipped his tea. It was…unremarkable. Not bad, but not masterfully made either. The flavour was good, though.

'Now then, Haruko hasn't been bothering you again, has she?'

Kimimaro sipped his tea again.

'On the money, eh? It might help if you…you know…_talked_ to her.'

'…'

'Yeah, not your style, I guess.' Gen always enjoyed talking to Kimimaro, even if he did tend to carry out the whole conversation by himself. 'Anyhow, something seems a little different than usual today,' he said, eyeing off Kimimaro's shopping. There was a lot of it. 'What were you after? More shirts and pants? I have some done up for you already.'

'Oh…' Kimimaro seemed thoughtful for a moment. Gen liked to have a few sets ready, so Kimimaro could purchase them at his leisure, seeing as how he went through the damn things like an axe through firewood. Didn't seem like that was why he dropped by, though. '…I'll take some of them as well.'

'You were after something different?' Gen treated him to a particularly suspicious eyeballing.

'Yes.' Kimimaro rose and collected one of the bags he had been carrying. Without explaining any further, he handed it to Gen. He didn't quite get it, but took the bag anyway, and looked inside.

To his not-very great surprise, it was full of clothing. But a few glaring details jumped out at him at a glance from his experienced eye. 1) They were not white- Kimimaro's preferred colour. 2) They were muddy and, unless he was greatly mistaken, bloodstained. Gen looked back to his customer and set down his fan carefully.

'Is there something I need to know about?'

'No.'

'Hrmm…' he fished out what at some stage might have been considered an article of clothing, and gave it a looking-at. It was purple, a pretty nice shade of it too, and had a decidedly… feminine shape about it. But it also sported nasty gashes, with dark stains around them emphasising how nasty they must have been to their occupant. 'Are you absolutely sure this isn't going to land me in any trouble?'

'Fairly sure.'

'Eeeegghhhh- okay. What exactly do you want?'

'Clothes of the same size.'

Gen looked back at the garment, his face glistening with sweat. 'I take it you're not going to be wearing them?'

'No.'

'…Anybody I know?'

'No.'

Gen may not have been the smartest man in the world, but he had a head on his shoulders, and was a little better than most at that psyco-whatsit stuff. His mother, rest her soul, had always said he was naturally talented. Probably why he understood Kimimaro so well. And the information he had compiled about the situation so far was as follows;

_Slim, female, acquainted solely with Kimimaro (if Gen didn't know her, neither did anyone else in town), between the ages of sixteen and nineteen.  
Situation: not-so-good, Health: also not-so-good if the clothes were any hint.  
Most likely not local, and not a topic of idle conversation. Conclusion: best handle with care._

'I take it you'd appreciate it if I stopped asking questions?'

'I would.'

'And that I should probably keep this between the two of us?'

'I'd like that.'

Gen threw his hands up in defeat. 'Okay, fine. I'll see if I have anything of the right size. And you tell me all about it when this thing blows over, yeah?'

'We'll see.'

* * *

Ino wafted around the room, bed sheets tied around her, under her arms. By sitting up in bed, and gradually trying to stand up, she had managed to reduce the adverse effects of being vertical. She just had a headache now, but it was nowhere near as bad as it had been a few hours ago. She probably should have been resting, but she had an odd feeling that it was best to move around a little.

She bumped off a wall airily, almost falling over. She managed to break her fall with a handy chair, but it still hit home how weak she was. Her head was foggy from the headache, and she felt light-headed as well. She tried to remember why it had seemed like a good idea to get up again, but found it hard to focus her mind. She couldn't remember too well.

She tried to put strength into her arms and lift herself up. Her elbows waggled in the air rather than straighten. Strength had fled her again. God this was pathetic. It was almost comical- her; strong, fast, deadly shinobi- too weak to stand up.

'Haha…hahuhuh…' the chair was uncomfortable. It had corners and edges, things not meant to be pressed into someone's body. 'Huahahaha…' what the hell was she doing here? 'Hahahaha…what is this?' why did she deserve this? 'Ahahahaha! Why did this have to happen to me?' why was she laughing so hard when there were tears streaming down her face?

Hourai. He'd been deceiving everyone from the beginning. If she ever found him, she'd tear out his throat, open his stomach, sever his spine, cut off his fingers- anything that would make him suffer and make him die a slow and painful death.

The rage fled her as soon as it had come, leaving her with only her tears. Since it didn't seem funny anymore either. Everything came out, all at once. All her gripes, old wounds, her injured pride and body- all of it. She couldn't remember having cried that much for a long time.

* * *

It was well into the afternoon when Kimimaro made his way back through the trees to his home, laden with many bags. Gen had chosen not to give him any advice on which clothes to buy for the woman, so (after much deliberation) he had chosen an outfit which was modest, but fetching at the same time (he hoped so, anyway). A blouse and a skirt. Gen had also thoughtfully included underwear.

Upon entering, he saw the woman was in the main room again, slumped over a chair. If she kept wandering around like this, he was going to have to tie her to the bed every time he went somewhere. He set his bags aside and checked to see if any of her injuries had opened again. None had, but two from earlier hadn't closed yet, and the shoulder was still being stubborn. As he checked, the woman stirred but didn't wake. The fact that she was using his bed sheets as some kind of dress did not go unnoticed, but he already had a solution to that.

With as much grace as possible, he hauled her upright and swept her off her feet. This did wake her, and she stared up at him blearily. Kimimaro noticed that her eyes seemed irritated and bloodshot. She must have been crying. He wasn't sure what she had been crying about, but her face held a certain amount of confusion and self-pity mixed with drowsiness.

Saying nothing and drawing no comment in response, Kimimaro carried her back to the bed. She didn't even resist when he took the sheet off and tucked her back into bed. She was being awfully cooperative. He brushed a few strands of hair away from her face. After realising what he was doing, the woman favoured him with a smile. It took him off guard, and he hesitated a moment before withdrawing his hand. She took this as her queue to clear her throat and give voice to something that had, apparently, been a subject of interest for some time.

'I…still don't know your name…'

'…Kimimaro Kaguya.'

'Yamanaka Ino… that's my name,' she added, unnecessarily. Her name seemed…uniquely unsuited to her, in Kimimaro's opinion. A boar in the mountains? Given what had happened these last few days, she seemed more like a delicate flower. The idea of a blonde-haired boar making a ruckus made him smile, just a little.

She didn't seem to notice, however, and quickly drifted off to sleep once more, murmuring his name to try and commit it to memory. Kimimaro remained seated, watching her sleeping form for some time. He took in, not for the first time, her tear-streaked but otherwise peaceful face, he curves of her body under the sheets, the gentle rise and fall of her chest…

He had some trouble breaking out of his revere. More than he was comfortable with.

* * *

A dark figure darted silently from tree to tree, going from branch to branch. It was followed by three, similarly silent and dark figures, moving in a similar fashion. They were doggedly following a trail of footfalls, damaged branches and scored bark to reacquire their quarry.

The apparent leader of their group stopped suddenly, a hint of white catching his eye, and waved the rest of his squad to a halt. He jumped lightly to the ground and approached what resolved to be the broken remains of a porcelain mask. He glanced up.

There was a corpse impaled on the tree, its feet dangling just above head-height like a macabre puppet. There was no question of it being a corpse or not. The living didn't have that much blood outside their bodies. With another flick of the leader's wrist, one of his squad jogged forward and began climbing the tree like a spider, sticking to it with his hands and feet in a way that a normal person would think impossible but was second-nature to shinobi.

Another hand gesture sent the last two of his squad scampering away through the trees, back on the trail. As the one climbing the tree went about the grim business of freeing the corpse, the squad leader knelt down and picked up the largest piece of the broken ANBU mask. Its surface was clean, unlike the trunk of the tree directly below the corpse. The recent rain had washed the mask, and the earth, clear of bloodstains. It had also erased all tracks on the ground, where the trail of destruction continued.

By the time the corpse had been secured, the two who had continued on returned, bearing bad news. They couldn't find the woman. The squad leader scowled. He had been afraid of that.

'We need to talk to Hourai,' said the corpse collector levelly, rifling through the deceased ANBU's clothes.

'Yes. We do.'

* * *

**Next chapter will be better. I'm slightly disappointed by this one, myself. I will try harder.**


	5. Division

**Author's Notes:** Agh, I'm dying here! Not really, but…you know… Sleepy fayce! =.=  
Truth be told; I wrote a few parts of this chapter while drunk- or while sobering up, at least. See if you can guess which parts.  
**Author's Sub-Notes:** A-BAM! Love scene time! Work/School safe though.

**Disclaimer: Hourai is a bastard. And he's **_**MY**_** bastard. Kimimaro and Ino are not mine, unfortunately. Deal with it. I did…**

**

* * *

**

'Potato?' Kimimaro asked candidly, offering a bowl of boiled potatoes across the table to Ino.

'Ah, yes please… Kaguya-san?' Ino tiled her head slightly, implying a subtle inquiry as to whether she was using the right name. A tiny twitch at the corner of an eye was the only thing that betrayed the involuntary reaction he had to being referred to by his family name. Ino didn't seem to notice, as she was preoccupied with transferring a potato from the bowl to her plate.

'"Kimimaro" will be fine,' he said lightly, setting the bowl back onto the table.

'Then…thank you, Kimimaro…' she tried, uncertainly. Kimimaro was unsure about her leaving a suffix off the end of his name, but he let it go for lack of any pressing reason to be addressed formally. 'Eggplant?' this time Ino offered a plate.

Kimimaro held up a diplomatic hand, declining the offer of a food he didn't particularly like. He had only bothered buying and cooking it because he was open to the idea that not everyone shared his distaste for the vegetable. Since Ino seemed to be pretending to pick at it now and then -possibly offering it to him in the hopes that he would eat some, and not notice that she wasn't having any- he probably shouldn't have bothered.

The bag of vegetables he regularly bought from the stall in town, at the shopkeeper's insistence that he take care of his body, was a cornucopia of variety. Kimimaro was willing to completely attribute this friendly gesture as the reason he hadn't turned into some kind of goblin that ate mushrooms as a main course twelve times a week. Still, he couldn't enjoy _every_ vegetable in the bag.

Times like these were where the vegetable bag really came into its own. Kimimaro would quite happily spend a day preparing and cooking the dishes for a banquet. Including this occasion, he had done so three times. The townspeople were very understanding of his desire for partial solitude, so he didn't get many visitors. The visitors he did get were either work-related, or the more pushy and self-imposing type of acquaintance. Like Gen and Haruko. He had seen Gen recently, but not Haruko. He hoped she wouldn't come visiting for at least a few more days. He'd never hear the end of it if she found some stranger in his house.

Ino dabbed at her mouth with a handkerchief daintily, reinforcing Kimimaro's belief that her name did not suit her at all, put down her chopsticks and fiddled with the hem of her new skirt. Kimimaro recognised the motions for preparing to bring up a complicated matter, and set his chopsticks aside too, still chewing a mouthful of spinach absently. For a moment, she seemed unnerved by his stare, but gathered herself quickly and cleared her throat, just to be sure.

'I, um… I never did have a,' she hesitated for a moment, picking her words carefully. '"Chance" to tell you about how I…came to be injured.' "Chance" meaning, of course, that she had several chances -especially today where she had insisted on helping Kimimaro prepare lunch and dinner- but had failed to find the right way to bring it up, or just forgotten.

'I…didn't go out of my way to ask, either,' he returned, apologetically. Ino looked unsure about how to take that, and Kimimaro realised that it may have sounded as though he had no interest in hearing what she had to say. He gave her a nod to continue, and she picked up on the gesture.

'Well, I'm from Konohagakure no Sato. But, you already knew that, didn't you?' Kimimaro nodded a simple affirmative, so she pressed on. 'I was on a mission. In this country. I can't say too much about it.' Understandable. Kimimaro could guess about the mission, in any case, but he wasn't sure exactly how Konohagakure fitted into the Kirigakure business. In fact, that might be a good way to make sense of the whole situation.

'It had to do with the shinobi from Kirigakure no Sato?' It was an unexpected question, with hooks on the end. And they snagged Ino as surely as a master fisherman snags a bass.

'How did you know that?'

'That doesn't matter. But I assume they were the ones that nearly killed you?'

A shadow passed across Ino's face. That was a "yes," then. She wasn't pleased by this line of questioning, apparently. Better to not pry too much.

'I apologise for interrupting.'

The surprise on her face was obvious, and she seemed somewhat off-balance. 'I…um,' she prodded the contents of her bowl nervously. 'The mission.' She went back to a part of the conversation she was more sure of and tried to remember where she was going with it. 'My companion from Konoha was…he didn't make it. And, um, we had a Kumo-nin with us as well…' she trailed off oddly. After a lengthy pause, Kimimaro felt moved to press the issue.

'What happened to him?'

'He…' she pointed wretchedly at her right shoulder, at the stab wound Kimimaro was all too familiar with by now. 'He gave me this.'

* * *

A eurhythmic whistling noise clawed at the edges of the otherwise silent room. Nobody paid it much attention. They were used to it.

A double-bladed kunai rose and fell in the gloom, the irregular differences in spin, arc and force making it slice the air differently, was the source of the noise. The man catching it behind the angular bulges of either blade between his fingers and spinning it back up into the air, found both the action and the noise that resulted from it calming. And he really, very much, wanted to be calm right now.

Leaving Yamanaka to die in the rain had been a bad idea. He should have watched her die, rather than gloating and putting on such dramatic airs. He had a bad habit for doing that- but what was life without a little flair, anyway?

Still, it was that very flair which had gotten him to this unpleasant juncture. Hunt her down, and make sure she couldn't tip off any loyalists in Kumogaure no Sato, or invite the direct involvement of Konohagakure no Sato- or proceed with the plan, and hope she was still too badly injured to have any significant impact on the scenario? Tough call. He was fighting against time either way, and neither the prospect of going off on a wild goose chase or leaving things to fate sat well with him.

He didn't like this.

Hourai caught the kunai around the hand-wrap and slammed it into the table in front of him. The sudden, noisy action drew a cursory glance and a reflexive reaching for weapons from the foreign shinobi in his company, but they said nothing. They hardly ever said anything. They were there to follow instructions, so words weren't high on their priorities list, but he still hated their insufferable reticence.

'You,' he said, pointing at a Kirigakure no Sato shinobi who he was reasonably sure was a squad leader. 'Take your squad and find me the blonde woman.'

The shinobi nodded curtly, and turned to leave. He was swiftly joined by three companions. He wasn't actually a squad leader, but they felt no need to correct Hourai's error.

This wouldn't do at all, oh no. A revolution wouldn't just happen on its own- and wouldn't happen with help, either, unless certain conditions were met. Those conditions included the division of the Kaminari loyalists from the revolutionary elements, and the suppression or obstruction of any outside-influences not friendly with the revolutionists. Yamanaka Ino was the proverbial "spanner" in the metaphorical "works," which threatened to make one or more of the topical "gears" slip.

In other words, he could not afford to let her roam free. Or be alive, for that matter.

He had felt sorry for her, at first. He always felt sorry for someone who needed to be sacrificed for the greater good, but he was short on compassion now. He had to move while he still had the legs to carry him. He sighed at turned to the remaining Shinobi in his company.

'The rest of you, with me. We need to start the "housework."'

As one, the Kirigakure shinobi rose, ready to kill, maim, and sow dissent.

* * *

Ino rolled over in bed, wincing as she put pressure on the injuries on her left side. She was having trouble getting to sleep for some reason.

After dinner, she and Kimimaro had gone to their respective bed/couch, after discussing the matter of her going to Kumo or Konoha. Kimimaro's blunt stance on the matter was that she wasn't well enough to travel yet. So, she was staying for a while longer.

She rolled over again, overwhelmed by the pain from her left side, and lay on her right side. It was, comparatively, more painful. She lay on her back instead.

She was really restless for some reason. Maybe because the rain had passed a few days ago, and the sun had been wreaking havoc on the land which had been overcast for weeks. In other words, it was too hot to sleep. It wasn't a very pleasant feeling.

In desperation, she threw off the sheets and tried to slide to a cooler part of the bed. It was comfortable for all of three minutes, by which time the bed had managed to match her body temperature. Finally, she gave up and rose unsteadily to her feet.

The house was filled with that heavy atmosphere associated with heat and humidity, and it felt as though it should have been filled with a faint red glow to accompany it. Ino found her way to the lounge room half-blindly and triangulated the position of the couch. Through the gloom, she could just make out the shape of Kimimaro. His fair skin and hair reflected just about all light that came in contact with it, and thus made him the most visible thing in the room. That wasn't saying much, since she still had trouble making out details, but he stood out when you knew where to look.

The first thing that struck her was his face, which seemed bountifully peaceful, compared to his usual no-nonsense demeanour. The second thing that struck her was that he was shirtless, once again. He must have felt it was a little hot tonight as well.

Were she to throw off all of her inhibitions and admit something about him she found attractive to his face, it would be that he looked really good shirtless. The understated, but powerfully muscled arms, the broad shoulders, the smooth, stroke able-looking chest- very nice indeed.

Maybe that was the real reason she was having trouble sleeping, she mused sourly. Her libido kicking in at totally inappropriate times. Having said so, she'd tap that in a second.

She mentally scoffed at herself. She had enough to be preoccupied with at the moment- an unfinished mission for a start- even without worrying about how to get into her rescuer's pants. Mental scoffing was all well and good, but she must have made some kind of self-loathing noise, since Kimimaro woke up suddenly and flipped off the couch with an agility that wasn't completely surprising by now. Even if there hadn't been any other clues, that movement demonstrated super-human alertness and physical ability. Ninja-like, in fact.

A pair of glittering green eyes scanned the darkness suspiciously, trying to adjust to the darkness and pin-point the source of the noise. He must have made out her outline somehow, since he tensed for a moment before apparently realising who it must be and relaxed again.

'Yes?' he asked carefully.

'Oh…I, uh-I couldn't sleep…' she trailed off.

'I see.' He probably did, at that. Even if he was missing a few emotions here and there, everyone had trouble sleeping sometimes. 'Anything I can help with?'

He said it without any hidden meaning, but previous thoughts of "tapping that" resurfaced in a flash regardless. Ino felt her face get a few degrees hotter than the rest of her, gasped, choked on the intake of air, and coughed a few times. She imagined Kimimaro raising an eyebrow in querying confusion. The image calmed her down a little.

Probably still not quite grasping the situation, Kimimaro made his way through the dark room and lit a lamp. Sometimes it's quite amazing how much a flame can illuminate a room. The yellow light fitted seamlessly into the warm, oppressive air and played across Kimimaro's face and chest eerily.

'Is there something you wanted to talk about?'

'Oh, err…yes, actually.' There was that little problem of her completing her mission. She had already touched on the subject, but had subsided immediately to Kimimaro's blunt but accurate appraisal of the situation.

Kimimaro, seeing that she wasn't going to come forward with it immediately, motioned for her to take a seat next to him on the couch. Ino gave him a wary look, but sat down quietly and tried to gather her thoughts. Kimimaro took the time to check her bandages. When he prodded her shoulder, she winced and twisted away from his finger unconsciously.

'Time to change your bandages.' Ino nodded distractedly and looped her hair around her neck before sliding off her shirt so that he could get to her shoulder.

'Well…the thing I wanted to ask was…about going to Konoha.'

'I remember this conversation,' he said dully, referring to their earlier conversation on the subject and removing the bandages slowly. The wound on her shoulder was almost closed now, and had almost stopped weeping completely.

'Um, yeah- injured, won't allow it- I remember too. But I wanted to ask something else,' she lifted her arm to make taking the anchoring knot of fabric at her side easier to access. 'I was thinking, maybe you could come with me?'

Kimimaro stopped. He was genuinely surprised. After the initial shock, he resumed his de-bandaging as though nothing had happened, but there had been an omissible pause, and Ino was a little proud that she had been able to throw him at all.

'Now, I know that's asking a lot. You must have friends and family here, but Konoha isn't that far. And it's not like I'm asking you to join the village- escorting me there is fine. I just really need to let them know that something's happening, and that Hourai is part of it.' It felt like she was talking just a little too fast, but she couldn't help it. 'And you'll be able to make sure I don't collapse somewhere on the way. It's feel like a waste of your goodwill if something like that happened. But, you're right- I probably should wait until I'm fully healed…' Wait…why was she talking herself out of it now?

'…I see…' Kimimaro looked slightly perplexed about how the conversation had just rolled straight over him, but he let it pass. She did have a point about escorting her home. It hadn't really crossed his mind that, while he had no living family, a few friends to speak of, a woman like Ino must have those things. And she probably missed them dearly. He couldn't possibly ask her to stay.

'Hey…hey. Kimimaro.' He snapped back to reality. The last piece of bandage was in his hand and, when his eyes refocussed, he was presented with something. It was strange, since he had been presented with it several times already, but he was unable to ignore it at that moment. A woman. That made him feel. Stripped to the waist. Sitting tantalisingly close. 'Are you listening?' Kimimaro looked up. And their eyes met.

And he was lost in the depths of those bright, teal eyes and completely lost track of what was happening.

* * *

And she was lost in those sparkling jade eyes, which seemed somehow more alive than she had seen them before.

She never was sure about how long they ended up sitting there like that, staring at each other. Kimimaro had an oddly lost expression plastered on his face- like he had no idea what was happening, but he didn't really care. It didn't suit him at all, but seemed as natural and peaceful as the forests she had grown up amongst.

Somehow, it did the opposite of calming her down. Her heart raced and she felt inexorably drawn to him. She shuffled closer, clumsy and not sure about what she was doing. Kimimaro still looked like he had absolutely no control over the situation, but was too interested in seeing what would happen next to try and get a handle on it. Their faces were almost touching now, and Ino noticed that Kimimaro was holding his breath apprehensively. She put her hands on either side of his face and, in a moment that seemed to last far too long, Ino closed her eyes and their lips met.

Kimimaro was everything she expected: clumsy and awkward, but he learned fast. Ino leaned closer and, with a little effort, pushed Kimimaro onto his back. Her breasts pressed onto his chest, and she felt his heart hammering against his ribs, beat-for-beat as fast as hers. As good as it was… she felt like something was wrong. Somehow…as their kissing intensified, she was filled with a feeling of sorrow. This was what she had wanted, right?

Lamenting the action almost straight away, she broke the kiss. Kimimaro looked up at her, almost as out-of-breath as she was. Selfish, sure, but she didn't want to be separated from him. Wanting to revisit his mouth, but feeling unable to out of guilt, she wriggled away from his face and lay her head on his shoulder. She sighed and let one of her hands caress the skin of his chest yearningly.

'…I wish I didn't have to leave, but… I have to return to Konoha.'

Kimimaro answered by wrapping his arms around her. Her breasts were pushed against his ribs a little harder, but the slight discomfort was offset by the warm feeling of security. Ino snuggled against him.

'Three days.' The words rumbled through Kimimaro's chest, and Ino found it funny in that special way you can only find something so innocuous funny in an intimate situation.

'Hm-hmhm, what three days?'

'In three days. I'll give you my answer then.'

'Answer…?'

'You'll see.'

'Hmmm…'

'…Ino?'

She was already asleep. Kimimaro smiled to himself, adjusted his hold on the woman in his arms, and settled in for the night.

* * *

**Author's Sub-Sub-Notes: **E-hehehehe. Love scene….STOLEN! Just when it was getting good, eh?


	6. Consolidation

Author's Notes: Blood and ashes! This chapter was waaay too hard to write for some reason. I haven't even read parts of it for a week or so, so I hope it makes sense, and is spelt correctly. ~.~

**Disclaimer: I do not own the series Naruto, its characters or trademarked gimmicks. Haruko, I made up; Tennji, I made up.**

**

* * *

**

The morning dawned like dream. The sun glinted off a heavy cover of dew- the uncomfortable heat of the night completely forgotten. The soft chirping of crickets was offset by the crisp singing of birds-

_Bang-bang-bang!_

Ino jerked awake violently and rolled over- or tried to. There was an arm in the way. In fact, there was an awful lot of someone else in the way. Kimimaro had his arms around her, and their legs had become somewhat entwined during the night. Neither of them had a shirt on, and there was a thin sheen of sweat between them wherever their skin touched. Kimimaro himself was blinking himself rapidly awake and seemed to regard the situation with great interest. Ino squirmed in his grip lamely, abhorring the way she slipped across his chest on a slick of sweat.

_Bang-bang-bang! 'Heeey! Kimimaro-kun! Wake up!' _came a cry from outside, muffled heavily. Kimimaro's eyes widened in recognition and he released his grip. Ino slithered onto the floor, landing on her right shoulder and stifling a scream. Kimimaro pulled on a shirt and managed to get a hold of Ino and help her up on the second attempt. Once vertical, she found her shirt and looked around frantically for a hiding spot. Kimimaro thought for a moment and pointed to the bedroom. Ino scurried in the direction of his pointed finger without hesitation, and disappeared.

_Bang-Bang-Bang! 'Heeeeeeeeeey!' _Once Ino was safely out of sight, he waited three seconds for good measure, then approached the front door. He took a deep breath, then opened it.

As expected, he was met by a pair of bright blue eyes framed by immaculately brushed brown hair. 'Good morning, Kimimaro-kun!'

Kimimaro looked down at her with sleep-laden eyes and tried to mop up the sweat that wasn't all his with his shirt. 'Good morning' he said curtly, as though talking to a stranger. The girl was less than impressed.

'What's with that half-hearted greeting? And what's with you coming to town two days ago and not coming to see me? And…' her nose wrinkled 'you stink!' Kimimaro tried to close the door again, but found it wedged open by the girl's face, which she had shoved between the door and the frame at the first sign of closure. 'I-I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Kimimaro-san! But please open the door, even though you stink!' She screwed up her face when the pressure being applied to her skull became painful and tried vainly to push the door open again. 'It-it hurts, Kimimaro-sama! Please forgive me, Kimimaro-sama!'

Grudgingly, as though against his better judgement, Kimimaro let go of the door and the girl stumbled through the threshold, rubbing the sides of her head. 'Uuuu, why are you so mean to me?'

'You should show more respect to your elders.'

'_Hiiiii!' _she waved her arms around furiously. 'You're only four years older than me, that doesn't count!'

'Four years your _elder_.'

'I'm telling you it doesn't count!'

Kimimaro sighed and tried a different approach. 'What did you come here for?'

'To say "hello," of course! Hey? Did I wake you up?'

'…'

'I woke you up, right?'

'…I-'

'I did wake you up! How about I make you breakfast to apologise?' There was a gleam in her eye as she said this, like she was asking him to grant her one true desire. Kimimaro twitched at the memory of the last time she had cooked him something.

'Please don-'

'It's no trouble, no trouble!' she was already reaching for a knife.

'Haruko-'

'It's _nooo_ trouble, I tell you! Sit your ass down! What would you like?' She said it with a smile on her face, but the knife gleamed wickedly. Suddenly, Kimimaro wished he hadn't sharpened it recently.

'Something that's difficult to burn.'

'Did you say something?'

'…No.'

* * *

'Yes, Haruko,' Kimimaro was saying, insincerely. 'Whatever would I do without your "Delicious Breakfast Charcoal?"'

Haruko looked the table squarely in the eye, not wanting to meet Kimimaro's. Thoroughly disgraced by her attempts at making fried eggs though she was, she wasn't going to cry. She wasn't.

'You don't have to say it like that!'

'Don't cry.'

'I'm not crying!'

Kimimaro poked the thin mass of crumbly black material dirtying one of his plates, attempting to find some hint of white or yellow. Finding none, he set his knife down and pushed his plate toward the middle of the table.

'Gochisousama.'

'Uuuuu…'

'Don't cry.'

'I'm not crying!'

Kimimaro sighed, more deeply than was necessary. 'Are you ready to go home yet?'

'Hm?' Haruko scowled at him. 'You really are being mean to me today.'

'Is that strange?'

'Uh…well…you're pretty mean most of the time…but you seem grumpy today. What's wrong? Did you have a scary nightmare?' A pair of hands clamped down on either side of her head. Kimimaro glared at her from very close proximity. Haruko's expression froze. 'Um…I-I'm sorry. I was being impolite.' The hands were removed. Haruko exhaled in relief.

Kimimaro sat back in his chair and folded his arms thoughtfully. In the years that he had known her, she had become…like a sister, he supposed. He still remembered the first time she had shown up at his front door. She had been very polite. Six years had done much to change that.

'W-what? You're giving me a weird look.'

'Hm?' Kimimaro snapped back to reality. 'Oh. I was remembering…'

Haruko cocked her head to the side in confusion. 'Remembering?'

'About six years ago.'

'Ah…' Haruko smiled, a dreamy expression creeping onto her face. 'Nostalgic…'

* * *

Ino groaned inwardly and tried to shift herself into a more comfortable position. There being less room than would allow movement, her position didn't actually change all that much. She ignored the sensation of her muscles cramping up, and tried to listen for any indication that Kimimaro's visitor had left.

She commended herself on being well enough to have hidden in the tiny cupboard above the wardrobe in the bedroom quickly and quietly, but it was turning out to have been a poor choice. In fact, it had started looking that way about an hour ago.

From the voice she had heard through the door and the high-spirited yelling she had heard since, she assumed it wasn't business-related. Assuming Kimimaro got business-visits. But no, this was more of a social call.

She tried moving one of her arms to allow her to reposition her torso, but a sharp skirting board dug into her bicep almost at once. No room. She gave up on moving for the moment and tried not to focus on the sensation that her limbs were fusing painfully together.

'_Nnmn, hnmmnmhmnhh.'_

That sounded promising. It was coming from…the hall, she guessed. She held her breath and tried to focus only on the muffled voice.

'_Hehee, that's true… Mmm. Should I…? Oh, alright… Hehe, I will. I'll see you again, soon, Kimimaro-kun! Bye-bye~!' _The final-sounding snap of the door latch was all the confirmation Ino needed. She stabbed at the cupboard door with her fingers until it was open enough to push herself partway out with her screaming legs.

Being out of the oppressive, confined space was such a relief she didn't bother getting all the way out. She hung out of the cupboard, upside down, by her legs and gulped down fresh air.

After a minute or so, just when Ino was thinking about getting down, Kimimaro appeared in the doorway carrying two bowls. He tilted his head curiously upon seeing Ino hanging upside-down. Ino, suddenly self-conscious, tugged her shirt up towards her waist. It had slipped and crumpled its way halfway to her shoulders, but no harm done. Then she remembered that he had seen her with no shirt on numerous times- then she remembered how she had fallen asleep last night.

Kimimaro winced empathetically even before Ino hit the floor. He pondered the wisdom of asking her if it had really been a good idea to hide in such a place, but thought better of it.

'Aaaah. What took you so long? I thought I was going to turn into a statue!' Ino complained, rubbing her head. She had been trying not to fall on her shoulder, for once, but it hadn't quite worked the way she had planned. Not surprising, given that she had formulated the plan _whilst_ falling.

'It was…complicated.'

'Arrh! Who was that, anyway?'

'Don't worry about that- have some breakfast,' he said quickly, offering one of the bowls he was carrying. The smell of stir-fried vegetables made her consider putting off the line of questioning for the moment- but only until she was done eating.

Still not quite sure she should be going along with this; she accepted a pair of chopsticks Kimimaro handed to her. '…Itadakimasu…'

* * *

Tennji Nendo -Chuunin of Kumogakure no Sato- paced the terrace, singing quietly to himself with broken, made-up lyrics. He liked to sing when he was patrolling. It kept him from thinking about how far he would fall if a particularly strong gust of wind nudged him off the edge.

He was assigned, for the moment he hoped, to man one of the small lookout posts dotted around the village perimeter. The village didn't have a wall, since most of it was built on sheer cliff faces and tall spikes of rock. Somewhere, far below his feet, ordinary people at the base of the mountain were doing the normal things that often made Tennji jealous. Being a shinobi didn't suit him, he'd decided. Not up here, on the mountain, at least. But he had done the training and passed the Chuunin exam, so it was a little late to be getting scared of heights.

He broke his tune to throw an irritated punch and the bank of cloud that was completely obscuring his vision. It did stop him seeing how high he was, which he liked, but he was meant to be a lookout and he didn't appreciate a cloud stopping him from…looking out. He blew a raspberry at it and started up a new song.

'I~ have a…I~ can see…Ummm…' He tried again. 'I~ hate Toushi~ like a... like a cloud made of…pepper in my eyes~ hmhmhm dodo do… All~ I have here is rooftops and clouds. Geez I hate Toushi, do dododo do…'

The clouds were passing now, and he could just make out a bare spire of rock, that he knew to be approximately two hundred metres away, rising out of the gloom like a ghostly finger. He watched it become more and more defined until the cloud was completely gone and he had an unobstructed view of the landscape as far as the eye could see. He shielded his eyes from the sun and resumed his pacing, occasionally scanning the ground below for any anomalous movement. It was an essentially pointless exercise, since all you could really see from so high up was, say, an approaching army, but better safe than sorry, eh?

'If I see one more damned carriage, I'll…go down the mountain, get a rock and throw it? Or bring it back up and throw it? A-da'yam I hate Toushi~ that cheating ba~stard drew me the short stra~w.'

Okay, so maybe singing wasn't his thing- but he had to do something to pass the time and…gosh, it really was a long way down…

'A-ahaha, I'm n-no~t afra~id of he-eights! Kumogakure Banzai!'

A noise made him turn. Noise wasn't anything new up here, all kinds of noises filtered up from below- loud noises, usually heavily distorted by distance. But this one hadn't been very loud, and didn't sound like it had come from below. He couldn't see anything that might have made the noise- probably that damn crow again. Whoever had been on sentry duty before him had given food scraps to the scraggly thing, and every time he ate it glared at him like he owed it something.

He shrugged it off and started walking again.

'I~ think I'm gonna have fish~ tonight. I'm~ gonna-Ghhhk!' Pain. Lots of pain. Pain like someone had just stabbed him. In the back. Had someone just stabbed him in the back? It _really_ felt like someone had just stabbed him in the back! 'Hnnnhk!' The knife, or whatever had been used to stab him, was violently wrenched free. Tennji managed to stagger a few steps before a kick to the small of his back pitched him over the rim of the terrace, and the ground rushed up towards him.

On the plus side, he didn't have to be terrified all the way to the bottom, since he passed out pretty quickly.

Not bothering to watch the body tumble away, a shinobi wrapped in a thick blue mantle and a Kirigakure no Sato forehead protector made the sign of the Tiger with his hands and transformed in a brief cough of smoke. He quickly checked his disguise over, then began prowling around the terrace -in a professional manner that the real Tennji would have been hard pressed to pull off- and cleared his throat.

'I~ think I'm gonna have fi~sh tonight. I~'m gonna go home and eat some ta~sty fish…do dodo.'

* * *

Kimimaro made his way through the village surreptitiously. He had heard an interesting story from Gen- one which gave him cause to take a great interest in it.

The story was that a band of travelling merchants had come into town early that day. Aside from the peculiar fact that these so-called merchants weren't setting up a stall in the middle of town and banging on at the townsfolk about the many benefits of their wares, they weren't really interested in trading, by the sound of it.

What they were interested in was one of their companions, who had apparently become separated from them at some point in their travels, and they would very much like to find her again.

The description of a young woman with blonde hair and teal eyes, wearing purple clothes had, naturally, rung alarm bells in Gen's head, so he had told Kimimaro about it the second he got into town. So- Kimimaro was attempting to find them without appearing overly suspicious. Not hard in a small town. You could hide in plain sight just by wandering around aimlessly.

When he found them, two of the "merchants" were talking to a villager. To be accurate, one of them was talking –quite animatedly- to a villager, and the other was staring at a wall vacantly.

The villager they were questioning shook his head and waved his hand in a definite "no" and strolled down the street to the greengrocer. The animated merchant glanced at the vacant merchant and sighed her disappointment. Almost as though she knew he was there, she looked up- straight at him and made a beeline towards him. The vacant merchant trotted after her obediently, still with a look on his face that hinted at bovine stupidity.

'Heeey, you over there! Hey, got a minute?' Not waiting for a response, she stopped in front of him, in just such a way that would cause Kimimaro maximum difficulty to get past, and asked him a series of questions listlessly, like she was getting sick of asking them. 'Are you a local?'

Kimimaro nodded that, yes, he was a local and tried to take the two merchants in. They were both roughly the same height, weight, complexion, had similar hair and eye tones, were wearing matching clothes, and carried identical wooden backpacks. There the resemblance ended, but they were similar to an extent that they were probably siblings. Something about them bothered him, though.

'Okay, there was a storm about a week ago, right?'

'Yes.'

'Right, did anyone come into town around that time?'

'Not that I know of…'

'Hrmmm…' she hitched up her backpack thoughtfully. 'Haven't seen any strangers in town- apart from us, I mean?'

'Well…' this probably wasn't such a good idea, but it was the most expedient way of getting some information quickly. '…Not in town…' As expected, the woman's eyes widened- even the vacant one seemed to perk up at this.

'So…outside of town, then? Where? When?'

Kimimaro glanced around, careful to look wary of something. 'Maybe we should talk somewhere else…'

'Sure, wherever, let's go! Lead the way, sir!'

Still not sure that this was a good idea, Kimimaro led them away from the village and into the forest. There was a certain part of the forest that few villagers went to, and for a very good reason. There were traps. Animal traps, in fact. Only the huntsmen ventured to this part of the forest, and only every few days. More people and more often would scare away the animals.

The distance they went into the forest was directly proportionate to how uncomfortable the woman became and how angry the man became. By the time they were getting close to the traps he was looking pretty unhappy. And the woman was looking like she was about to freak out.

'Um, sir? How far do we need to go just to talk?'

'Not far now…'

They were almost there. Almost at the large pitfall that the hunters chased wild boars into. No matter who they were, being in a hole would be disadvantageous to them. If it came down to a fight, he wanted to be sure he could kill them quickly. He was dealing with shinobi now, after all, not just some hired thugs.

It wasn't until a few moments after the footsteps behind him stopped that Kimimaro realised the merchants had stopped walking. He turned to find them both glaring daggers at him.

'This is far enough, _sir._ I'd appreciate it if you'd tell us what you know now,' said the woman.

'No tricks, please,' said the man, a dangerous gleam in his eye, and the moronic expression off his face.

'Very well…' Kimimaro sank into a low stance, ready to extend bone spiked from his palms. 'But first, I'll have you tell me which Hidden Village you come from.'

A smirk spread across the woman's face. 'Interesting… I didn't think we'd find you so soon!'

Then, both merchants were enveloped in a puff of smoke, as they dispelled the simple illusion which had disguised them so well.

* * *

**Author's Notes: Ha-shaa! Fight time! Nobody in this story has really used any "high-level" techniques yet. But I think that Henge is a vastly under-appreciated skill. Look forward to a fight scene, next chapter!**


	7. Factions

Author's notes: It took me three weeks to write this one...or was it four? The words are leaving me! And I have a horrible suspicion that I'm only a third done!

Support a washed-out author by leaving reviews today!

**Disclaimer: I has no monies! Be leaving me alone! I owns no official characters of Naruto! They...belong to Kishimoto! **

**And now for something completely different.**

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Kimimaro threw himself against a tree and waited for the brief storm of pulverised earth to blow past him. The suspicious shinobi had wasted no time in forcing him to realise that he had underestimated them. Normally, he wouldn't have had so much trouble against a dozen chuunin-level shinobi, but this wasn't normal, and they probably weren't chuunin.

The two shinobi he was now facing didn't look particularly formidable at a glance, but the girl with pink hair was using some method of chakra-manipulation to throw a devastating punch that could easily destroy the ground he was standing on and send chunks of dirt and rocks flying in all directions. The fat one in red hadn't done anything particularly dangerous yet, but that was just an extra reason to be watchful.

The sound of running footsteps and a grunt of exertion made him jump sideways, avoiding an explosion of splinters and the body of a collapsing tree. He sidestepped the fat one, who had, at some point, started rolling around like a ball, and got out of the way of another crushing blow from the pink-haired girl.

This was going to be difficult. The girl was too dangerous to approach carelessly, and the fat one was rolling in a way that made it difficult to stab. Hm…

The next time the human bowling ball came towards him, he managed to get behind it and kick it, going with its rotation. The impact made it bounce haphazardly into a tree, but it rolled down and came at him again. Truly bothersome. He reminded himself that there was more than one opponent, and ducked a chakra-laden punch that detonated above his head and gave off an appreciable wave of air pressure. But he was within striking distance now.

The sharp tip of the bone protruding from his right hand swept diagonally up towards the girl's collarbone. Defending her body with her forearms, she suffered a gash on her left and a nick to her right, but was otherwise unharmed. She jumped out of his reach to try and recover, but he was less than a step behind. She was expecting another swipe with the bone blades, so he kicked out side-long, catching her in the stomach and sending her sliding backwards on her toes. The rolling man wheeled past, preventing Kimimaro from following up, and allowing her time to regain her balance.

Then, suddenly, there was another noise. A crashing of leaves, but an absence of footfalls. Kimimaro glanced sideways in time to see a blur of orange, black and yellow heading in his direction, and had just enough time to duck before a human shape passed through the space his head and shoulders had been occupying a moment before. The shape sprang off a tree, and landed safely between the pink-haired girl and the fat guy, who had stopped rolling. They all had smiles of victory on their faces, which served to annoy him even more.

He was about to wipe the smirks from their faces when he realised he wasn't moving anymore. He tried to step forwards, and found that he couldn't. Then, rather jerkily, he started walking forwards, even though he hadn't wanted to. His arms fell to his sides, and he made his way towards the three shinobi, and noticed that there was a fourth walking forwards to join them. He stared Kimimaro directly in the eye with a steady, brooding gaze. He came to a halt about four feet away from Kimimaro and, after a few moments of scrutiny, looked over his shoulder at his associates- and Kimimaro had the uncomfortable experience of being forced to look over his shoulder at a nearby tree.

'Sakura, are you alright?' he asked, addressing the pink-haired girl.

'I'm alright, just a cut and some bruises' she returned, laying her open palm over the wound on her left forearm.

'Are you OK, Sakura-chan?' the orange-clad blonde asked her urgently, even though she had already answered that question.

'Yes, Naruto.' Her voice held some irritation at being interrupted, but when her hand came away from her arm, the wound was completely gone. Iryou-nin?

'Shikamaru, we should be careful with this guy,' said the fat one, in a less porcine voice than Kimimaro had imagined him having.

'Yeah,' said the apparently leader of the group as he turned his head to face Kimimaro again, mirrored by Kimimaro. It was then that Kimimaro caught sight of something very, very important. They were wearing Konoha forehead protectors.

'Konoha?' Kimimaro blurted out, surprise obvious in his voice. The one called Shikamaru raised an eyebrow incredulously and tried to put his hands on his hips. The blunt edge of the bones sticking out of Kimimaro's hands prevented him from doing so, and so too prevented Shikamaru from doing the same. He put his hands back by his side.

'Yes, we're from Konoha. Were you expecting someone else?'

'…'

'Hmmm… This _is_ troublesome…' he fell back into a sitting position, causing Kimimaro to do the same. 'But I'd like you to tell me a few things. I've got time.'

* * *

In the quiet, dimly lit antechamber of a mansion in the underpopulated hills an hour by foot outside Denza -a large city in the county of Lightning- a single finger drummed impatiently on the armrest of a centrally positioned dais. A contingent of silent servants, their faces tastefully shrouded by black cloth stencilled with the lord of the house's crest, ringed the room. With a flick of his wrist, the occupant of the dais sent a porcelain cup bouncing across the stone floor. It was made to withstand this kind of treatment, but a hairline fracture split the green surface as a faceless, black-clad servant darted forward to collect it. The lord of the house didn't seem interested. The finger continued to drum unabated.

Something wasn't right. No information was getting through to him from his spies. There was a blind spot in his overview of the country. The fact that the blind spot obscured virtually everything outside the mansion walls vexed him greatly. He had heard nothing from Tsukasa since he left to investigate, and even Kimimaro had failed to make scheduled contact to report the success of his last assignment.

The drumming finger paused thoughtfully before being raised to point at the servant industriously picking tiny slivers of chipped clay from between the floor's gaudy flagstones. When the servant realised it was being addressed, it palmed the shards into the broken cup and sat respectfully at attention.

'You' the lord said dryly. 'Where is Tsukasa?'

The servant bowed low from a sitting position, lamenting that it had no favourable news to convey. 'I regret that I do not know, Raitengeki-sama. He must still be outside the household.'

Lord Raitengeki bit back a surge of fury that urged him to punish the servant for being so useless. There was no point to getting over-anxious. He needed to calm down. It took him a moment to notice that the servant still had its forehead pressed to the floor, awaiting either instructions or punishment.

'You may go.'

'Yes, my lord.' The servant was well-trained, and immediately returned to clearing up the remaining specks of clay and spilt tea. Lord Raitengeki was glad that he had refrained from beating it, and decided that showing mercy was an adequate reward for such admirable servitude.

He settled himself again and tried to force his muscles to relax. Not easy, as he was extremely tense today. He felt restless. Perhaps some swordsmanship drills would calm his nerves.

He rose deliberately from his sitting position and the shrouded servants immediately drifted forward to wait on him. He made his way towards the double doors at the entrance of the room, which was opened at his approach, and headed for the dojo.

* * *

Thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, forty. Ino pushed herself away from the floor, switched arms, and started doing one-armed push-ups with her right arm. She shrugged off the sharp bite of pain from her shoulder, as well as the dull ache from the larger bruises and deeper cuts that hadn't quite healed yet, and powered through another forty.

It hadn't been a good idea to train these last few days, so now that the level of pain she felt from various places on her body were easily tolerable, she wanted to try and catch up on lost time. She wasn't a huge fan of physical training, but she felt like a cat that had been in a cage for too long. She wanted to run around, and jump from tree to tree- anything! But, she didn't know the area (at all), and Kimimaro had very nicely asked her to not leave the house. So, since she was already drenched in sweat and stank to high-heaven, she had decided to do some stamina building exercises before having a very _long_ bath.

After finishing breakfast, she had jumped right back to the topic of who the hell the girl that had come visiting was. Kimimaro had managed to placate her by briefly explaining that Haruko was the first friend he had ever had, and that she was like a little sister to him.

That still sounded a little dangerous, but she was content to believe that the "little sister" wasn't any serious competition. Kimimaro was all hers… sort-of.

Easing into the steaming hot bath, grateful that the house had running hot water, she fell back to her biggest gripe at the moment: Geography.

Kimimaro lived here, in the Kaminari no Kuni countryside. Ino lived in Konohagakure no Sato in Hi no Kuni. "Long-distance relationship" was putting it mildly. If you wanted to get from Kaminari to Hi you had to pass through at least two other small countries on the way.

She couldn't just leave Konoha, but Kimimaro apparently had no affiliation to Kumogakure, so he could move to Konoha without having to be a nuke-nin. But she couldn't just ask him to do that, he had friends here that were the closest thing he had ever had to family, if the way he talked about them was any indication.

She groaned inwardly and sank further into the hot water, ignoring the faint burning sensation from her injuries. She submerged her head and blew petulant bubbles that rolled up over her face in an oddly soothing way. There was no point in thinking about it now. She vaguely remembered Kimimaro saying something about giving her an answer in three days, but she wasn't sure if she had dreamed that or not. Her best bet, she supposed, was to wait and see what happened. Her mission was still important, and had to be completed as soon as possible, but she really did need Kimimaro's help with that. Assuming she actually knew what to report, that is.

She knew Hourai was up to something, he had help from Kirigakure, and he had said something cryptic about "changing" this country. It was hard to say precisely what he meant by that, but it definitely wasn't something benign.

She resurfaced and wiped the water away from her eyes. The bath was good. How long had it been since she last had one? Two, three weeks?

She sighed, as though breathing out all her troubles, and enjoyed the water.

* * *

'It's not that I don't believe you, but you must understand how the situation looks from my point of view, right?'

Kimimaro did- it was only prudent to treat a story like "I found your friend, conveniently alive, and decided to save her on a whim" with some measure of caution. He understood that, but… he couldn't help feeling like he was being ominously watched over by fleas. The girl, Sakura, the energetic Naruto, and the other male he hadn't caught the name of were standing behind him, presumably to kill him if he made any sudden moves while Shikamaru listened to his story. He had no overwhelming desire to be hit by one of Sakura's monstrously powerful attacks, and Shikamaru's shadow was difficult to deal with, but apart from that he couldn't help feeling that they were simply beneath him. But, Shikamaru had graciously removed the technique that had forced Kimimaro to mimic his movements while they talked, and the compromise was that he endure being stood over by the likes of Naruto in case he tried to kill them mid-conversation.

'I can imagine.'

'As long as we understand one-another,' Shikamaru rose (inelegantly, in Kimimaro's opinion) to his feet. 'So, assuming you're telling the truth, I'd like to go to your house to see Ino as soon as possible. I'd appreciate it if you'd lead the way.'

'Would you feel uncomfortable having me behind or next to you?'

Shikamaru smiled at the question. 'That's very perceptive.'

Kimimaro smiled at his response. 'That is very sensible.'

'Huh?' the one called Naruto seemed confused by this exchange. 'You guys are sort-of similar, aren't you?' he crossed his arms and pondered why this might be the case.

'I guess so,' Shikamaru mused, 'I guess it's intellectual appreciation. You wouldn't understand.'

'Hmm-hey!'

'Naruto.' Sakura stopped the conversation immediately with the tone of her voice.

'Sakura-chan?'

'We don't have time to argue.'

'What's up?' Shikamaru apparently found her intrusion into the conversation important enough to take his eyes of Kimimaro.

'When we were asking around town about Ino, we did find out something.'

'What?'

'That someone else had been asking about her before us.'

* * *

Ino was in the middle of drying her hair when the alarm was raised. Kimimaro had, at some point during his occupancy, installed some basic perimeter alarms in the woods around his house. At the moment, the rope in the rafters -running along the length of the roof- marked with the number Four was shaking, causing the wooden tags suspended from it to chatter against each-other excitedly. The chattering lasted only a few moments, before it settled down. Then there was a slight shiver.

Ino was no psychic, but she could tell what had happened as though she was watching it happen first-hand.

One or more shadowy figures approaching the house carefully, accidentally kicking the trip wire. The mistake was realised even as it happened, and the foot was pressed into the ground hard to stop it moving suddenly. Then, with exaggerated care, the foot was slowly and smoothly dragged backwards until it was clear of the line.

After a few agonising moments of complete silence, whoever was heading to the house -deciding the element of surprise had been broken- moved in with less caution. Alarm ropes twelve, six, three and nine jerked suddenly, clacking as though someone had stepped heavily onto the trip wires they attached to. Ino had no idea about the layout of the wires, so she didn't know what direction they were coming from, but she was sure she only had a few seconds to figure out a plan.

She pulled the towel she was wrapped in tight, secured it, and ducked behind the doorframe of the bedroom silently. She was unarmed, but she was still a shinobi. She made her clan's trademark symbol with her hands, looking through the gap between them at the door as though looking through binoculars and waited.


	8. Battle Lines

Author's notes: There it is! I finally finished des next chapter! FIGHT TIME!

Review whore suffering from withdrawal.

**Disclaimer: Masashi Kishimoto (owner of Naruto) would have written this a lot faster than me! Get thee behind me!**

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Building fights were always fast, vicious, and much more lethal than fighting outdoors. Even something as benign as a totally empty room was a potentially deadly trap. Shinobi had various ways of hiding or concealing traps in plain sight, even without the use of chakra.

The three Kirigakure no Sato shinobi, ready to assault the lonely house deep in the woods, quickly readied their weapons and came silently to a halt. They hugged the walls around the door, and one of them hunched in the cover of a nearby tree as backup for the other two.

With more care than was absolutely necessary, but was probably prudent for the task, one of the shinobi by the door took a small bottle from a pouch on his belt, and drew a tiny wire from it. It came out covered in a thin film of oil, and the shinobi painstakingly applied it to the socket of the door handle, reapplying oil as needed. When he was done, he passed the bottle across to his associate, who carefully threaded the wire through the gap between the opposite side of the door and the frame, and dabbed oil on the hinges. They may have destroyed their element of surprise by stepping into those trip-lines, but they could still surprise whoever was inside by entering silently. As long as they weren't watching the front door. A long shot, maybe, but if an advantage could be exploited, it should be.

Tentatively, one of them tried the handle. It turned with a satisfying lack of squeak or grind, and the hinges moved with no more than a groan- which was barely audible, even with an ear pressed against it. The shinobi slowly returned the handle to its original position, and let the door fall most of the way inward before stopping it with a finger. No sign of anyone inside, so there may not have been anybody home- but since there had been traps set up in the surrounding area, they had to assume that anybody inside would be hiding.

They started off down the entry hall, stopping to check each doorway they came to in turn. The first one was a bathroom; empty. The second one…caused a stir. As the first one of them glanced into the room, he froze so suddenly that the two behind him, thinking he had been hit by some kind of trap, jumped back instinctively.

The lead shinobi, frozen in the doorway, apparently breaking from his trance, squinted into the room. He leaned in a little more, glanced around, and turned back to his colleagues. He indicated that the room was empty with a single, curt nod and took a measured step towards the main room. Assuming he must have thought he had stepped into a trap when he actually hadn't, the other two followed him obediently, and were surprised when he suddenly turned on them, knife glittering through the air.

The shinobi directly behind him realised what was happening, and realised that he was going to die. Though he had tried many times to find a way of avoiding that knife in training sessions, and suffered various injuries for his troubles, he had never managed to work out a way of successfully dodging it. It was a custom-made knife by a long-dead weapon smith, which altered the perceptions of whoever it was swung towards. It could confuse people just enough to make them be unable to use Bunshin, Kawarimi, or any other techniques which might be able to enable someone to avoid it. And though he had felt its effects many times before, facing a blow meant to kill instead of injure was something else altogether. He knew that even trying to move was pointless, he knew that his fate had been assured with the slightly sloppy slash that didn't seem like its wielder's style at all, and he knew that he wouldn't be missed by many people. He wasn't sure if that was entirely the knife meddling with his mind or his own weakness, but he was sure that he wouldn't be in pain for very long…

Taken by surprise, but already pulling strings of shuriken and kunai out of his belt pouches, the second shinobi doubled back and tried to understand what had just happened. He didn't remember seeing their leader talking to anybody who may have bribed him into betraying them, nor could he think of a reason why Hourai might have ordered him to do this. But one look at him, trying to free his own knife from the corpse of their late comrade made him think it may not have been quite so simple.

* * *

_Shit._

Ino tried one last time to free the knife. After slicing cleanly through several ribs, it had become pinched between the severed halves of one and didn't want to budge. She might have been able to do it with her own body, but she just wasn't used to this one yet. It had only been a few seconds, and the sparkling of the knife had temporarily made her bleary.

The third invading shinobi was about five feet away, and looked like he was about a second from figuring out that she had hijacked his friend's body. Given that he was poised to throw about forty projectiles at her, she'd rather not give him that second.

She wasn't too sure about using techniques in a body she wasn't used to yet, but she was going to have to try. Giving up on the knife, she quickly made a few symbols with her hands and dived into the bedroom.

* * *

_Shit! Someone's taken control of him!_

He was already swinging his strings of projectiles when he saw his former comrade turn to look at him. He saw the familiar hard, scathing gleam in his eye, but it was a shadow of what it normally was. Then his hands moved.

It was kill or be killed now. The shinobi redoubled his efforts, lashing the strings like whips and sending a hail of steel down the hall. They briefly came in contact with several illusionary copies of their intended target, before continuing on and peppering the far wall with flying knives.

His former leader was nowhere to be seen. He had, most likely, slipped through the open door he had been standing next to.

Tossing aside the spent projectile cords, the remaining shinobi took a double-ended kunai from one of his belt pouches and crept down the hall, hugging the wall that would keep him hidden from view of the door. He considered taking "Hiken" from the corpse to his left, but grabbing the handle was probably akin to asking his enemy (whoever it was) to "please cut my hand off."

He hadn't known such humiliation since his days in the Academy. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd allowed himself to become this angry. What he did know was that it had been years since he'd had such a strong itch to kill someone. And he wasn't even sure if it was the woman from Konoha that he was dealing with.

One advantage he probably still had was his ability for blind fighting, which was considered quite high-level even in his village, which was famous for it.

* * *

Ino's first clue that something very dangerous was about to happen was a thick bank of fog wafting through the door. She had seen Kirigakure no Jutsu before, but didn't know of any countermeasure for it.

Taking a long-shot anyway, she attached an exploding seal (taken from her captive body's numerous pockets and bags) to a kunai and threw it into the floor where she assumed the door to be. It was hard to tell already, such was the density of the fog.

The tag detonated, sending a weak shockwave out from a point she couldn't even see anymore and, based on the lack of a scream or grunt of pain, failed to do anything to attacker number three.

She was quite happy with herself for being able to set up a few simple traps and stash her unconscious body (and some weapons) out of sight in the time it had taken the other shinobi to try and rush her, and she hoped she did a good enough job on the traps to deal with the shinobi by themselves.

A second small explosion and associated shockwave told her that the exploding tag she had put on the wall right next to the doorframe had gone off- still no sign of pain being inflicted.

Next, a trip-wire on the floor was snagged, dropping two kunai bandoliers to the floor. They weren't mean to cause injury, but to get snagged on the shinobi to give away his position long enough for Ino to find him by hearing alone. If any part of the strings hit him, she couldn't tell. Everything seemed to clatter to the floor impotently.

And, finally, the last trap was: her stolen body itself.

She had a kunai in each hand, and a determination to do some damage before she had to flee the body a second or two before being killed.

A small, nondescript noise directly in front of her made her lash out with the kunai before she realised she had been stupid to fall for the ploy so easily.

The brutal kick to the side of her head almost dislocated her jaw.

* * *

He felt his foot hit something solid and heard the satisfying thud of something heavy hitting the wall. Trying to push his advantage, he darted forward and lunged at the place the body would have fallen with both the daggers in his hands. He was slightly surprised to not find his target lying prone, but not so surprised that he didn't have a backup plan.

The expected counter attack came at him from the side, and caught him just below the ribs.

But that was fine.

* * *

Ino was taken aback when the shinobi she had just managed to stab burst like a water-filled balloon and cascaded over her hands. A second's warning let her use the momentum of her swing to turn herself around and hit the shinobi as he tried to kill her from behind. Again, he collapsed into water- but now Ino was dangerously off-balance and vulnerable. This was it. The shinobi she had been fighting- already stepping for the killing blow- had her.

It was time to leave.

* * *

His final moment of triumph turned to sour grapes when he heard that one word.

"Kai!"

...Crap, it was too late to stop now. Oh well, he had forced the puppeteer out of his comrade's body- merely at the cost of his comrade's life. He shared an agonising moment with his squad leader- clearly back to himself again- as he died, gasping painfully and grabbing at his familiar killer in a hopeless attempt to hang onto life. Then he was dead, and the only remaining Mizugakure no Sato shinobi remaining, astonished at his own lack of insight, realised that he had just wasted a valuable moment. A moment enough to allow the one that had been controlling his squad leader to come out of hiding and attack him while he was occupied.

Moving with instincts honed by many battles and years of training, he released his grip on his daggers and rolled to one side, barely managing to avoid a row of kunai which appeared in the floor and the body of his late squad leader, clearly thrown from an elevated position. He did, however, roll right into the widely-dispersed path of one of five shuriken- probably thrown to block his escape route.

The shuriken had been thrown hard enough to embed itself in the back of his left calf, only the tips of two points protruding from his skin. That meant he couldn't rely on his left leg too much, but it didn't mean he couldn't move or walk. He'd suffered through worse pain before.

Barking out a wordless sound that spoke only of pain and rage, he pivoted on his good leg, half-rose to his feet and accepted the figure descending on him with open arms.

As he let the fog saturating the house gradually dissipate, he reached up and caught both wrists of his enemy, who he recognised instantly: the woman from Konoha.

Having been denied the act of falling on him kunai-first, her legs started to drop in an accelerating arc like a pendulum towards his sternum. She put a little extra weight into it and hit him full in the chest knee-first. The blow impacted the ribs on his left side and didn't faze him in the slightest. She hadn't been able to put enough force into it, and the pain in his leg was overriding anything else she could have done to him at that moment.

Dangling by her wrists and struggling against his grip, the woman tried to knee him in the groin feebly a few times, without much success. He failed to notice that she was absolutely naked and that her chest was heaving from exertion- nor would he have cared had he noticed. Using sex appeal to disarm your opponent was an old trick of kunoichi, and he had been trained to not notice such things out-of-hand.

In a last-ditch effort to escape his grasp, the kunoichi tried to head butt him, but couldn't move enough to make contact. He decided to save her the trouble, smashing his own head into hers and nearly making her black-out.

He let go of her arms, letting her flop to the floor, head spinning. He reached for his last dagger and-

-Went flying out the window.


	9. Reconciliation

Author's notes: Nuts.

**Disclaimer: Someday, when I'm rich and famous, I may buy the rights to Naruto- but as of the writing of this, I own SQUAT!**

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* * *

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'Ino!'

As the Kirigakure shinobi crashed through the bedroom window and landed bodily outside, Naruto- shaking the Rasengan he had hit the shinobi with from his hand- searched the fog-obscured floor blindly for any sign of Ino. He could hear the others making similar searches elsewhere in the room, Sakura being the most vocal overall.

'Ino, are you alright?' Shikamaru called from somewhere before cursing quietly to himself (probably after hitting his head on something).

'Ino!'

'Hnnll? Who...?'

'Ino!' Naruto turned towards the sound and swept his hand across the floor until it hit something. 'Ino? Is that you?'

'Naruto? Wh-why are you here?'

Naruto's hand found what he took to be Ino's shoulder, and tried to raise her into a sitting position. 'Hey, I found Ino!'

'H-hey, wait a second!' she squirmed in his grip for some reason.

'Where are you, Naruto?'

'You found her?'

'Over here!'

'Hey, hold on! Go outside!'

Thinking she was worried about the Kirigakure shinobi getting away, Naruto tried to assuage her concerns. 'Don't worry, Ino; Chouji and that white-haired guy can take care of him.'

'That's not what I meant!'

'Damn it, Naruto- where are you?'

'I'm here!' Ino was really struggling now. Naruto tried to get a firmer grip. 'What's the m-' his question died in his throat as he found out what was making her so insistent that he leave the room.

'Hiiiihh!' The fog had been slowly clearing since just before they entered the house, and now it was thin enough for Naruto to see exactly what he was doing. One hand was, as he thought, on Ino's shoulder. But the other one, with which he had been trying to stop her moving around so much, had come to rest on her bare chest. 'What the hell do you think you're doing!'

'Wh- aaaahh!' apparently Shikamaru could see as well.

'NA-RU-TO!' so could Sakura.

'H-hold on. It wasn't me- wasn't my fault, I mean. I couldn't see and-'

'Get. Your. Hands-'

'Wait!'

'OFF. ME. YOU. PERVERT!'

Naruto let out a small scream of pain when she hit him. The right-hook, with the majority of her weight behind it, spun him around. He tried to scramble to the door on hands and knees, but Sakura (having already shooed Shikamaru out of the room) made sure to kick him in the ribs on his way past.

* * *

In the quiet tranquility of the dojo, a single blade sliced the air. It had made the same downwards motion countless times- always coming to rest at exactly the same place. About chest height.

Lord Raitengeki raised the katana again, stepped forward and brought the blade down again in one fluid motion. It was a mind-numbingly repetitive routine he had done every day since childhood. These days he hardly had to concentrate on it at all, allowing his mind to ponder important matters instead of focusing on the movements of his arms (which had long ago memorised what was expected of them). He found it a very relaxing diversion to his day-to-day business of plotting the downfall of his fellow feudal lords, and figuring out how to pacify the filthy peasants over which he resided.

It was (with a certain amount of pride) that he could legitimately claim to be almost ninja-like with his sword skills. Just as they endured harsh training for their entire lives, so had he stubbornly pursued perfection in his swordsmanship.

He noticed, absently, that his inattention to his footwork was bringing him perilously close to a wall, and paused to change direction, continuing on without the danger of leaving a gash in the walls. He then noticed that he was no longer alone.

'Oh, Tsukasa. How long have you been there?'

Tsukasa smiled thinly, his face mostly shrouded by shadow. 'For quite some time, my lord.'

Lord Raitengeki gave him a famously passive look before returning to his training. 'I see... Your report?'

Tsukasa, from a kneeling position, bowed his head until it almost touched the floor. 'Something is happening, my lord.'

'I gathered that. What, _uniquely_, is happening?'

'Kumogakure is moving.' Lord Raitengeki's sword finished the swing it was in the middle of, then stopped- a frown crossing its owner's features. 'That is why my return was postponed, and why your other servants have not been heard from. Kumogakure is actively controlling the flow of information and travel between cities and villages.'

Lord Raitengeki sheathed his sword. This was unwelcome news indeed. The last thing he wanted to happen was have Kumogakure involved in the controlled political turmoil. Even worse- if another lord had figured out who was covertly killing political rivals... 'Your conclusion?'

Tsukasa bowed even lower, looking as though he was having stomach pains, but Lord Raitengeki did not comment on it. 'I cannot say for sure if this movement speaks of danger to yourself, but I would guess... Kumogakure has decided to do something about the "situation." At the request of the Lord of Thunder or by their own initiative is unclear.'

This wasn't looking good so far, but something about Tsukasa had been bothering Lord Raitengeki since his arrival. With a small wave of shock, he realised that Tsukasa was in a good mood. That spoke volumes all by itself.

'You do not see this as a problem?' he asked testily. It was best not to let Tsukasa enjoy his private joke for too long.

'No, my lord~' Tsukasa started rocking from side to side, bent around himself and head still firmly pressed against the floor. 'If Kumogakure were after your life, they would have it by now. I think this is a _chance!_' Lord Raitengeki was slightly put-off by the sing-song voice Tsukasa was speaking in, and the way he kept almost giggling every word. 'Using whatever chaos is about to consume the land as a veil, you might eliminate all opposition to your rule and place yourself in the Throne of Thunder!'

Lord Raitengeki considered this at length, ignoring Tsukasa who was still rocking and giggling to himself. He certainly had a point. If Kumogakure wanted him dead, there wasn't an awful lot he could do to stop it. But here he stood. Also, Kumogakure wouldn't protect the Lord of Thunder unless they were being paid to, and held no loyalty to the governing family as such. There was certainly some merit to what Tsukasa was saying. But he had to act quickly. He needed to be swimming with the current when the situation worsened, as it probably would if he let Tsukasa roam the streets, killing notable lords.

One of his most useful pawns, Kimimaro, was still unaccounted for. Kumogakure would make contacting him difficult, and there was no guarantee that his last assignment had gone as well as planned. He'd have to think about that a little more. But right now, he had to act.

'Tsukasa. Ready my horse.'

Tsukasa began laughing in a louder and more concentrated way than before, but began rising slowly to his feet and made his way to the sliding door he had apparently entered the room through.

Lord Raitengeki left the dojo at a steady pace, followed as always by a small flock of servants.

'Prepare my travelling clothes.'

'Yes, Raitengeki-sama.'

* * *

With a sudden jerk of motion, a bubbly, sticky spatter of blood flecked itself against the floor. Being unable to wipe the excess away from his mouth, the bound Kirigakure shinobi rubbed his face against the floor, leaving overstated red smears against the otherwise clean floorboards, as well as his own face. Then, moving despite the many bruises he must have had by that point, he sat up again and let his eyes prowl the room.

'Are you sure,' Shikamaru said slowly, stressing every word. 'That you were hired by Hourai to "pick vegetables?'" The Kirigakure shinobi pretended to think it over at length.

'Yep- one hundred percen-' Chouji's fist hit the side of his head like a hammer, sending him sprawling and bleeding across the floor again.

'Are you sure?' Shikamaru repeated patiently. On the floor, the shinobi made a weird sound and tried to blink the stars out of his eyes.

'Well, maybe only ninety-_nine _percent sure,' he admitted impetuously.

Shikamaru stopped Chouji from hitting him again with a simple hand signal, giving the shinobi time to sit up defiantly once again. 'You know, I think we're going about this all wrong.'

The shinobi stared at him darkly. 'You don't say,' he drawled, his voice dripping with disdain. Shikamaru ignored him.

'Let's try a simpler question... What's your name?'

'...Haaah?'

'It's troublesome to just call you "you."'

'Ey, I didn't come here to make friends- but,' he adopted an entirely over-dramatic voice. 'You can call me "The Great and Honourable Shousensoukai Genreikiri," if it makes you feel better.'

Shikamaru studied his face and turned the obviously fake name over in his head for a moment before nodding to himself firmly. 'Alright, it's decided. Your name is "Daruma."' The shinobi looked at him with an almost comically deadpan expression.

'Your face is all red, and you get up whenever Chouji knocks you over,' he explained. The shinobi, Daruma, continued to stare at him.

'Well, I think it's funny. And on the subject of not coming here to make friends- why did you come here, of all places?' he asked, gesturing in the general direction of the house around them. Daruma's eyes, very purposefully traversed the room until they came to rest on Ino- whose expression hardened.

'Let's stick to questions you _don't_ know the answer to, eh?' he returned, apparently drawing his gaze away from Ino only with the greatest reluctance.

'I see,' Shikamaru said curtly. 'Then what is your mission in this country?'

Daruma grinned, showing off a set of bloodstained teeth. 'Picking vegetables,' he said, as though savouring every syllable. The grin faltered a bit when Chouji knocked him over with another strong blow, but it soon returned in full force. 'Can't make vegetable Ramen without vegetables!' he added gleefully, wallowing in a small pool of his own blood. Naruto's ears pricked at the mention of ramen, but he stayed quiet.

'That's true,' Shikamaru said evenly, deciding to play along a little. 'But what kind of ramen would you make if you weren't picking vegetables?'

Daruma, taken off guard for a moment, secured himself a dramatic pause by getting laboriously to his knees before answering. 'Meat, of course,' he said eventually.

'I see... Are you hungry?'

Daruma cracked another grin. 'I thought you'd never ask! But now is a bit...you know, what with you interrogating me and all...it'd make more sense to starve me until I tell you what you want to know, right?'

'You know what? That's a good idea. Lunchtime, everyone! Make sure not to feed the dog any scraps-'

'Wasn't I a Daruma? Hey! Bastard!'

* * *

Way up, in the higher reaches of Kumogakure, the Raikage sat at his desk, trying to get through the last of the day's paperwork. It was past three in the afternoon, so any other forms that came in would be put on the top of tomorrow's pile, unless it was urgent.

The paperwork was always the most trying part of the job, he found, so he usually left it to his assistants. However, sometimes (like today, when he failed to find a good enough reason to excuse himself) it was unavoidable. He tried to loosen up his shoulders absently as he approved the last five papers with a flourish. Then he put a more concerted effort into stretching out his neck-

The sound of popping joints was audible in the next room, and made a few inquisitive paper-pushers look around curiously. The Raikage gave himself a few seconds to get over the horror the sound and sensation put into him before straightening up the papers and slipping them into the outbox, which was emptied with all haste.

Feeling quite a lot better after cracking his neck, he rose and sauntered over to the large window, which would have otherwise been a wall, and looked down at the village hidden in clouds.

'What is it? I just finished work for the day.' His question was directed at a shinobi, who had appeared behind him _quite _suddenly and silently. But he wouldn't be much of a Raikage if he couldn't notice one of his own subordinates sneaking up on him.

'Raikage-sama, there's something you should see-' the shinobi said, taking a step forward before the Raikage cut him off.

'Spit it out if it's so important,' the Raikage's voice was perfectly level, apparently not at all offended that his free time had been cut off so prematurely.

'...We've discovered the body of a Chuunin, assigned to sentry duty three days ago- lookout post six.'

'Hmmm...' the Raikage tried to dredge the name from his memory. In the true spirit of a village Kage, he knew every shinobi under his command quite well, but there were an awful lot of them, and it was hard to keep track of what each of them were doing at any given time. 'Nendo-kun, was it?'

'Yes sir.'

'Continue.'

'The...body appears to be two days old-'

'And?'

'-And the Chuunin in question was last seen this morning, while being replaced at lookout six.'

'An intruder?' the Raikage mused, a few steps ahead of the conversation.

'We believe so, since the body shows no signs of being tampered with. In addition, no attempt has been made to conceal it.'

Satisfied that this matter warranted his full attention, the Raikage finally rounded on the shinobi, shorter than he was, and wearing the uniform and mask of Kumogakure's ANBU. His identity was not an issue at this time. 'Cause of death?'

'He was stabbed in the back pre-mortem, but it is unclear if he died from it or the fall.'

'Hmmm...'

Since Kumogakure was spread over a large area, as it mainly clung to the sides of steep mountainsides, and was accessed by swing-lines, slip-lines, hugely ungainly sets of stairs (often used to test graduates from the Academy), cable cars or flying- there was an awful lot of room to conceal things. A small group of highly skilled shinobi were of particular concern, since they could hide just about anywhere. This, in part, was a primary reason for the (apparently not) over-the-top security network that protected the village from such threats.

This was made up of three separate parts; first, the observation point located at the peak of the highest mountain, used to continuously scan the countryside for suspicious activity. This system was not foolproof, as it had several blind spots. This was dealt with by the lookout posts, which observed with the naked eye what the observation team couldn't- and were themselves concealed by genjutsu. Finally, the largest mountain was surrounded by a proximity net, similar to how Konoha dealt with intruders.

The fact that someone had murdered one of the lookout post's sentries, eluded the prying eyes of the observation point, and not tripped the security net pointed to one thing- treachery! Someone, either one of his own shinobi or a nukenin, wanted to get into Kumogakure. The blatant murder of a sentry, and an apparently poor job of hiding it was indicative of this traitor trying to introduce outside elements into the village. Every time a shinobi went missing, the security net was altered subtly so that they could not return without tripping the alarm. This meant that either the nukenin and his flunkies were waiting for something to happen before trying to directly assault Kumogakure, or the traitor was already inside, waiting for the right time to strike.

'Hmmm...'

'Raikage-sama!' the ANBU boy urged.

'Hrmf, don't panic. This is not so serious an issue,' it actually was, but it wouldn't do to have ANBU running around causing havoc when they should be laying low and ever poised to strike when the traitor made himself known. 'To be safe; the village is on high alert, as of now. Weapons to be carried at all times. The Observation Point is to be sealed, current staff- and extra shift- to remain at their stations. See that it happens.'

'Yes, Raikage-sama!' and then the ANBU boy was gone. The Raikage turned back to the window, considering the village below him with more apprehension that he would have previously believed possible. The last words the ANBU boy had spoken stuck in his mind in particular. Sensible. Obedient. ...Perceptive.

Even if it was a bit of a bother, he was proud to know that his ANBU were clever enough to know when he was talking with a stiff upper lip. He just hoped they were clever enough to know to do the same.

* * *

**Author's notes: I should probably mention that this Raikage is not the same as Killer Bee's brother (whatever his name is). Think of his as "just some kage."**


	10. Conflagration

Author's Notes: Soooooooo Deeeeaaaaaaaad~

**Disclaimer: I own nothing! With the exception of Raitengeki, Tsukasa, Gen, Haruko, and Hourai.**

* * *

Kimimaro woke suddenly, propelling himself into a sitting position with his back reflexively. He stopped himself from gasping or growing any bone protrusions, realising that he had woken because of a dream. By then, he could barely remember any details about it. For some reason, he felt he wanted to remember it- despite not being able to remember why.

He was sleeping on the floor of the lounge room (having surrendered the bedroom to Ino and Sakura before Shikamaru or someone else had any idea about insisting), which probably accounted for the lightness of his sleep. Glancing around slowly, he noticed that Naruto and Chouji- sleeping malignantly in the corners of the room- had a wary eye on him, apparently woken by his unexpected movement. Shikamaru, who had secured himself the couch at the earliest opportunity, was facing away from him, but Kimimaro had no doubt that he was listening to his every move.

Daruma, apparently resigned to being a captive until killed or set loose, was sleeping soundly. Hanging by a rope tied around his waist, which also pinned his arms to his back, he was breathing loudly with a placid expression on his somewhat bruised face- saliva evident around the corners of his mouth as he alternated gently from side to side.

Feeling a little put out, Kimimaro lay down carefully and tried to get back to sleep. Naruto and Chouji quickly lost interested in him, and tried to get some rest themselves. Shikamaru...he wasn't sure.

Trying to fall asleep in the middle of the night can, occasionally, be much harder than would normally be considered possible and Kimimaro soon found himself becoming frustrated. With an uncomfortable jerk of comprehension, he realised that something was bothering him- he just hadn't realised what it was yet.

Not really expecting to see anything that would obviously be causing him so much discomfort- besides the three Konohagakure shinobi in the room with him, of course- he scanned the room for anything overtly out of place. So it was that, with a certain amount of horror, he noticed something through the window. An eye.

Apparently pleased that Kimimaro had noticed it, half a row of teeth shone above it and Kimimaro realised he was actually looking at most of an upside-down face. It was a face he recognised, too.

He wasn't sure why Tsukasa was hanging from the roof and peeking through a window at him (until he once more remembered his company), but he had a fair idea of why he had come in the first place.

Tsukasa, still grinning like a sun-bleached skull, breathed through his teeth on the window, partially fogging it up, and disappeared. Kimimaro got the message though. He rose as quietly as he could, waking Naruto, Chouji and Shikamaru despite his best efforts, and made his way to the door. The Konoha shinobi, only slightly irritated at being woken a second time, were content to stay as they were and let him go. For all they knew, he was just going to walk off some energy- and for all he knew they trusted him to not disappear on them.

Closing the door behind him, he found Tsukasa lurking in a shadowy patch among the trees, still with that thin smile splitting his face. He turned away, motioning Kimimaro to follow, and disappeared deeper into the woods- clearly not wishing to be overheard by Kimimaro's guests. Kimimaro debated following him for a time, but eventually decided to pursue him in the hope of avoiding a difficult situation with the Konoha shinobi currently occupying his house.

He lost Tsukasa's trail some way into the woods but stopped quickly, knowing Tsukasa would be waiting behind the next tree, hoping to scare Kimimaro if he could.

Tsukasa stepped into view when he heard Kimimaro stop, looking a little put out at being denied his fun, but that damn grin reasserted itself quickly enough. Something very nasty was going to happen soon, if he was that happy. Kimimaro wondered if Lord Raitengeki had ordered Tsukasa to kill him, but set that idea aside as "unlikely."

Tsukasa waited for Kimimaro to ask something, like "what are you doing here, Tsukasa," but gave up after a while, seeing Kimimaro wasn't inclined to lead the conversation.

'Hmhm, Kimimaro-kun... I've missed you~'

'What do you want, Tsukasa?' Kimimaro put in, before Tsukasa could continue in his disgusting, lilting tone. The grin vanished from his face. One thing Tsukasa really didn't like was being interrupted- ironic, given that he would happily drive a cart through someone else's conversation.

Tsukasa hid his mouth with one over-long sleeve and squinted at Kimimaro through the wild flashes of crimson hair protruding from his hooded black jacket. 'You have not made contact in quite some time. Raitengeki-sama has been asking after you.'

'I've been...' Kimimaro searched for a way of phrasing it that wouldn't sound like he was just shirking his duties. Finding nothing particularly good, he settled with '...occupied.'

'So I see~' Tsukasa moved his hand away from his face, once again showing off the grin that suggested Tsukasa's face was not used to (or particularly good at) smiling. 'I hadn't realised that you were prone to taking stray cats home with you~' Then, as an afterthought; 'What's her name, by the way?' Kimimaro gave him an icy stare, daring him to push the line of questioning. Tsukasa accepted the challenge with delight.

'The blonde girl, with the nice body... Oh! What a terrible thing...! Being torn up like that, when you found her... But aren't you getting along well now? You two were almost going at it yest-'

The punch had been a good one, and Tsukasa had dodged it in his typical fashion- by bending backwards in an unlikely way at the last moment. He hadn't been able to avoid the somersault-axe kick, which carried all of the punch's momentum and then some. Tsukasa went over backwards, the back of his head striking the ground first regardless of his attempts to shield it with his hands. He regained his feet and glared at Kimimaro, rubbing his cheekbone distractedly. The humour was gone from his eyes.

'Temper, temper. You're a dreadful man when you get serious...'

Getting swept along by his emotions, Kimimaro immediately snapped back. 'You're one to talk. What's wrong? Run out of hair?'

'Never.'

Tsukasa reached out with one covered hand, the end of his sleeve dangling a good foot from his fingers, and grabbed at something invisible. In one quick motion, his sleeve was drawn up (as though under great tension from something extending from his hand) before dropping again, accompanied by an odd snapping sound. A very obvious crashing noise presaged the fall of a tree, which had been bisected with unnatural smoothness. Kimimaro glared at Tsukasa, unperturbed.

Tsukasa returned the glare with a slightly strained smile. 'We really are going to kill one another someday, Kimimaro-_kun_.'

'I look forward to it, Tsukasa.'

'Tsk.' No longer enjoying himself, Tsukasa finally arrived at the true subject of his visit. 'Raitengeki-sama has made final plans for his ascension to the Throne of Thunder. Plans in which you do not appear.'

'...What?'

'He has planned for your absence,' Tsukasa elaborated sardonically. 'Understandable, given the situation: The lord on the eve of his triumph! The village hidden in cloud choking off communication routes!' he threw his hands towards the sky and exclaimed, as though the entire world had just become his private stage, and its population his rapt audience. 'The loyal servant, separated by miles of difficult terrain! And the foreign kunoichi- seeking shelter and love from a cold-blooded killer!'

'Are you done?'

'I think I can, maybe, squeeze another few Acts in... The point is; your "services" are no longer required.'

That hit Kimimaro pretty hard. Years and years of loyal service, and now he was being dismissed- just like that. He recovered quickly enough to realise that something was off about Tsukasa's story. Communication _hadn't_ been lost- Tsukasa himself was the proof of that. More so, if he had been watching Kimimaro for days.

'You bastard! You set this up. If Raitengeki-sama needed me for something, you could have relayed his message!'

'I may have...lied about Kumogakure's communications strangle-hold...to an extent.'

'Why?'

'Because I don't like you, descendant of Kaguya!'

'Our bloodlines have nothing to do with this, you know that!'

'Be silent! That doesn't change the fact that I find everything about you -especially your Kekkei Genkai- repulsive. For this, Raitengeki-sama's finest hour, I and I alone will stand by his side! Besides, you seem to have your hands full with- oh, excuse me. You seem to have your hands full _**of**_ that woman recent- woah!'

Kimimaro prepared another bone dagger to throw at him. Tsukasa took the hint and made himself scarce, having said his piece.

Kimimaro stood stock-still until he was sure Tsukasa had left before turning on his heel and stalking back toward home. He wouldn't be the most well-tempered man in the world tomorrow. Tsukasa had that effect on him.

* * *

'Uuuuuurrhh...!'

Ino shifted slightly, disturbed by the strange noise. It did not take kindly to her movement.

'Uuuuhhhr! Ino...!' it whined irritably. Ino grimaced, cracked an eye open. Sakura glared back at her. She didn't seem happy that, at some point, Ino had shoved an elbow in her face. 'Do you mind?'

'Oh. Sorry,' she said, without much enthusiasm.

'You don't sound very sorry. Or are you saying that Kimimaro-san should have been here instead of me?' Wow, she was grouchy this morning. But that comment had been a bit below-the-belt, in any case.

'Lay off! First Shikamaru, and now you? I'm starting to wish you hadn't come looking for me.' Saying so, she rolled over and pulled most of the sheets around herself, exposing Sakura to the relative chill of the bedroom.

'Uhhh,' Sakura decided that she had been a bit harsh. 'Sorry...that was uncalled for, wasn't it?' Ino agreed by not responding. But she did loosen her grip on the sheets by way of accepting her apology.

Sakura, obviously still a little embarrassed at the unpleasant turn of events, clambered off the bed and stretched some life into her limbs. The unusual warmth of the last few days had receded, leaving behind a muscle-tightening chill that would make you shiver all night unless encased in several layers of cloth. Abruptly changing the subject, Sakura decided they should go and see how the boys were doing.

"The boys" were in a state of acute disorder. Chouji and Naruto were attempting to freshen themselves up by exposing their eyes to the harsh morning light, Shikamaru refused to leave the couch for an hour after being poked by Ino, but Kimimaro was already up and restless- irritably waiting for a large pot of water to boil. He had been intending to prepare miso soup and rice for his guests before they woke up, but the clammy, chill air was making the wood burn weakly and the water reluctant to simmer.

Daruma, either by play or actual feat, was still sleeping cheerfully. As though the prospect of imminent death meant he could at least get an extra few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Once kicked awake and fed, Shikamaru decided it was as good a time as any to inform everyone about his decision. The decision, of course, had to do with what they were going to do now.

'First- your mission, Ino. That was to collect information on the Kirigakure shinobi operating around the Kaminari/Oto border. Mission successful. Hell, you even got us a live one,' he gestured in Daruma's direction. Daruma, still dangling from the rope, seemed to be awake now and tried his best to look contemptuous.

'Second,' he continued, 'My mission. To recover you and your team, since we lost contact with you. Here you are, and we have already sent back the corpses of the others. Not a total success, but it will have to do.

'Third...Kimimaro.' Everyone waited for Shikamaru to continue. When he didn't, faces turned in his direction.

Kimimaro pondered how best to respond, risking a glance towards an anxious-looking Ino. '...Has just lost his job,' he eventually announced, without humour.

Nobody was quite sure how to take that. Not wishing to explain the current state of affairs with himself, Lord Raitengeki and Tsukasa, Kimimaro kept it simple. Shikamaru appreciated the need for secrecy about his former employer -as long as it wasn't something that would come back to haunt them- and didn't pursue the matter beyond a few pertinent questions. The others were similarly (and surprisingly) respectful about his past.

To his mild surprise, Ino chose this opportunity to raise the idea of taking Kimimaro back with them to Konoha. Not being from Kaminari no Kuni in the first place, not being affiliated with Kumogakure in any way, having lost his "job," having no living family, and only knowing a few people in the nearby town (which Kimimaro figured he could always visit or write letters to) was a fairly compelling argument. In the end, the decision of whether he could actually become a shinobi of Konoha fell to the Council of Elders and the current Hokage- but Ino was able to convince Shikamaru (with the help of a deeply moved Naruto) to take Kimimaro with them.

And so it was that Kimimaro became involved in the planning of their movements from then on. His familiarity with the local terrain, political climate and common trade routes quickly proving invaluable.

* * *

**Author's Notes _Again_: If you think the last part felt a bit rushed- I agree completely. If you don't know what a Daruma is- google it(ggrks).  
**


	11. Masquerade

Author's Notes: Yaay, I finally managed to my writer's block right in'na face! Here is a new chapter in all its...capacity.

**Disclaimer: Funnily enough, I still do not own Naruto or any official characters of the Naruto series. If I've named some of my original little characters after any characters from the Filler Arcs- this is purely coincidental. Filler arcs are CRAP.**

* * *

Lord Raitengeki waved at a peasant in what he thought was a jovial manner. They had made eye contact, so he felt he needed to show they were equals somehow. The peasant -confused by why someone who was obviously an aristocrat was waving at him with a disturbing smile- continued to stare, the bundle of poles across one shoulder completely forgotten.

'You there, traveling companion,' Lord Raitengeki abruptly asked one of the people flanking and following his horse, completely losing interest the peasant. 'Why does that man gape at me?'

The traveling companion, most certainly not the servant of a well-known aristocrat, pondered how to answer the question briefly before replying. Lord Raitengeki was drawing a lot of attention to himself. He was well dressed, spoke formally in an oddly condescending way at all times, was riding a horse, and was obviously being followed by a group of suspiciously servile-looking people.

'I...believe,' he began, wondering if telling the truth would get him beheaded for being impudent. '...He may have seen through your cunning ruse, my lord.'

'Certainly not!' Lord Raitengeki replied loudly, aghast at the idea (and failing to notice that he had been addressed as "lord"). 'Am I not wearing my traveling clothes?'

The servant, feeling as though a giant hole was slowly opening up below him, again pondered the wisdom of answering this question truthfully.

'It...it could well be that your fabulous posture is simply too telling, my lord!' It was only half a lie, since Lord Raitengeki did indeed carry himself in a regal manner, very unlike the work-worn stoop of the common folk currently gawking at this unusual procession. The fact that it was hard to spot on someone riding a horse was probably best left unsaid.

'Really...' Lord Raitengeki said incredulously, attempting to make himself slouch in the saddle. '...this is rather uncomfortable.'

Feeling the ground slip away again, the servant was compelled to offer additional information. 'It...could also be that our...attire is rather, err, rather more...expensive than these people can manage, my lord.'

Lord Raitengeki took the information in carefully, and turned it over a few times in his mind. He then examined the sleeve of his haori before turning his attention to another peasant, who froze momentarily before bowing deeply and trying to shuffle away discreetly.

'...You may have a point,' he admitted. 'Their clothes certainly are _well-worn_,' he said the words as though they were something particularly unpleasant. 'But still, do I not simply look like a particularly wealthy merchant?'

The increasingly anxious servant swallowed hard. Only a few of the servants were carrying packs of food, since Lord Raitengeki planned to buy provisions and lodgings very regularly along their highly populated route to the capitol. This presented a problem which was obvious to anyone...with the possible exception of Lord Raitengeki.

'That...that may not occur to them, my lord- on account of us not having any wares to sell.'

Apparently, this _had _occurred to Lord Raitengeki. 'Ah, but I may have just sold my entire stock in Denza, and am on my way to resupply,' he suggested conspiratorially, almost causing the servant to faint. 'However,' he added thoughtfully, and the servant felt newfound hope. 'I see how all these- purely coincidental- factors _could_ lead someone to the conclusion that I am not a simple- but wealthy- merchant.'

More people were staring each time Lord Raitengeki spoke, his idea of a private conversation being one that was projected down a long table in the company of many people that did not matter at all- but the servant was a little more confident that he was not going to be punished.

'Traveling companions!' he exclaimed suddenly, drawing the undivided attention of everyone within earshot. 'I believe we require a more resilient disguise.'

* * *

The route by which the Konoha party chose to travel took them on a wildly meandering journey through the wilderness of Kaminari no Kuni. They stayed well clear of townships and large country residences wherever possible, preferring the cover of forests and mountain terrain. It was unlikely that more of Hourai's hired shinobi would be looking for them- he was now down by three, after all- but better safe than sorry.

Daruma- having been considered too great a risk to leave tied up somewhere for a few days, was bound (in what must have been an incredibly uncomfortable position) on Chouji's back. Chouji was using genjutsu to make Daruma look like an oversized backpack, and had adopted the same dull-witted merchant appearance he had been using when Kimimaro first met him. Everyone else, Kimimaro included, were also making themselves look a little less conspicuous.

Against Shikamaru's better judgement, they were not heading straight back to Konoha. After getting him to agree to the idea of taking Kimimaro back with them, Ino had pushed the necessity of following up on her mission. The seriousness of the situation seemed to warrant a direct report submission to the Raikage. If even half of what Hourai had said was true, then something very big was about to happen.

On a more personal level, Kimimaro had a bad feeling about what the future held. As much as he tried to dismiss what Tsukasa had said as his usual pretentiousness, the way he had spoken was so gloating and enthusiastic it had almost been disturbing. And suggested that Lord Raitengeki's plans were nearing completion.

Kimimaro was not privy to the particulars of the overall plans, but it was bound to be of a large-scale, knowing Lord Raitengeki's personality. Generally, Kimimaro was just given a name, a face and instructed to kill at a certain time and place. He had never taken a great interest in the "How" or "Why."

But Tsukasa had. An intense interest, he was sure. He would have taken great pleasure in having a hand in causing an entire country to be destabilised in some way. He was that kind of person.

When he and Tsukasa had first met, Kimimaro had disliked him instantly. Tsukasa had made no attempt to improve their relations, being jealous of the trust Lord Raitengeki placed in him- which Tsukasa had managed to usurp over time. At one point, meeting in a corridor by chance, he had arrogantly stated that their mutual dislike stemmed directly from their Kekkei Genkai. Kimimaro had been...displeased at the time, and had decided to show Tsukasa why he should show his senior a little respect. A few blows were exchanged and Tsukasa had walked away with a broken jaw, a cracked rib, a superficial wound to the torso and his pride seriously bruised.

Their relationship had steadily declined since then.

* * *

In the highest reaches of Kumogakure no Sato- higher even than the Raikage's office- squatting on the artificially flat plateau of the tallest mountain, was the Observation Point. Capped by a golden cone, the bulbous tip of which housed the chakra antenna- a relic dating back to the time of the first Raikage- and supporting a staff of ten plus room for a second shift to rest while under lockdown conditions, it was the village's first and best line of defence. It had no offensive capabilities to speak of, but it was a tool of information, and information often translates directly into an advantage in a battle situation. While the Observation Point was active, it was almost impossible to approach the village without being seen.

Kai Take; Shift 1- Observer 5, one of seventy shinobi specially trained for years to interact with the antenna, was bored. He was bored easily, but over the years he had developed the necessary mental functions to find almost anything entertaining or engaging. The fact that they were on high alert and under lockdown conditions certainly helped him focus, but it was amazingly tedious work when nothing was happening.

Focusing his mind's eye through the antenna, he made a brief sweep of the eastern limit. Nothing caught his attention. There weren't even any animals there.

He turned his attention to the northern limit, briefly crossing the optical range of one of the other seven Observers. It was always a slightly odd feeling when that happened. The northern limit was also innocent of any impending threat to the security of Kumogakure.

He considered breaking the connection for a moment to rub the drowsiness out of his eyes, but one- or both of the duty officers would give him an earful for his lapse of attention.

On a whim, and just for a change of pace, he pulled his view back, almost right into the antenna, and slowly checked the radial arcs of the other Observers. Observer 1 was roaming around the northern arc lazily, like a searchlight flowing over the terrain unhurriedly. Typical of him.

Observers 2, 6 and 7 were all watching the western limit.

Observers 8 and 4 were checking the near and limit approaches to the east, and Observer 3 was sweeping the south with a steady regularity that bordered on obsessive. Typical of him.

Kai swept his vision to the far south, intentionally crossing paths with Observer 3. He could picture the look on the hard-ass' face already. But, there'd be no trouble as long as it looked like it hadn't been intentional. The south was also clear of suspicious activities.

He refocused on the west, wondering if the three other Observers had found a merchant convoy, or anything to look at. What he saw surprised him too much for his jaw to realise that it should have dropped.

No less than three hundred bodies seethed in his field of vision. Most of them were tall, broad men marching in well-drilled files. They carried no banners, but they were all dressed in light blue uniforms under painted blue armour and carried weapons that clearly identified them as belonging to the formal army of Kaminari. That would have been alarming enough, to have even a small detachment of an army to approach unannounced, but Kai was sure he could see shadowy figures moving alongside them, expertly sticking to the shadows and peeling from cover to cover with practiced ease. And mixed in amongst them all were small knots of unruly, mismatched men that looked for all the world like unskilled mercenaries.

The most alarming thing, by far, was the fact that the eyes of four Observers were now on them but no word of alarm had been raised. As he frantically looked around to grasp the severity of the situation, he found that not only had the other three Observer seen them, but were following their progress with interest. That didn't make any sense. _Nothing_ was making any sense!

He severed his link with the antenna.

The confines of the Observation Point span into focus at a speed that was disorienting. He should really have broken the link more gently, but he felt he had to hurry.

'Sir,' he said unsteadily, trying to make his real eyes focus properly.

'What is it, number five?' asked one of the duty officers wearily, probably expecting Kai to request he be relieved early.

'I...' he shook his head, trying to get rid of the nausea. 'There's a large force moving towards the village from the west!' He could see better now. The four Observers that were still ignorant of this fact, sitting facing inwards on cushions arranged at eight points directly below the antenna, furrowed their brows at his words, turning to gaze at the west. Their faces went slack with surprise and horror. The other three didn't seem troubled by hearing what they already knew.

'We know,' the duty officer said, apparently unimpressed. 'It's nothing to worry about. Re-establish your link to the antenna, number five.'

'But-' his voice caught in his throat. His eyes were back to normal, and were desperately trying to bring some alarming facts to light. First; there were more than two duty officers in the room. In fact, there were six of them.

Second; they were all carrying weapons. Weapons were strictly forbidden.

'Number five,' one of them said. Kai didn't recognise him. 'I said it's nothing to worry about. Re-establish your link to the antenna.'

'I-' suddenly, the tip of a sword was against his throat. It was touching him, but just gently enough for it to not break his skin.

'I won't ask you again, number five.'

Hesitantly, reluctantly, and under the deadly gaze of six shinobi that would certainly kill him if he tried to resist, Kai turned back to the centre of the circle and connected his chakra to the antenna.

'Very good. It wouldn't do to have the Security Net geezer wondering why an Observer was disconnected ahead of schedule. And, before you take that as an invitation to cause trouble- we can fill your places... Oh, and you should all take it easy now, you'll be working overtime today. Second shift has been...relieved.'

Kai heard another Observer grit his teeth and hiss quietly in frustration.

Slowly, he turned his projected vision to the west, and watched helplessly as an army approached his village. If the Observation Point had been compromised, the Lookout towers probably had been as well. That only left the Security Net or a lucky glance out of a window to warn the village that an army was at its doorstep.

He desperately wanted to do something, but he knew it was useless. If he disconnected again the disorientation would make him wobble enough to alert his captors to his actions, and they would swiftly butcher him before he had enough motor control or visual clarity to defend himself. He could try to get the other Observers to disconnect all at once, to try and tip off the master of the Security Net, but there was no guarantee that it would do any good.

No, he was going to live through this- he knew it. And it would be his shame forever.

As he watched the ponderous advance of the mixed-force army, silent tears began rolling down Kai Take's cheeks.


	12. Supplantation

Author's Notes: Many religious words in this chapter! Kannushi = Shinto Priest. Shintai = Divine Body. Haraegushi = mop-like, paper-tasseled wand used in purification rituals. Shaku = Ritual baton.

_Author's Ramblings: I'm not dead yet! Though I feel like I am... Anyway, I know it's been a long time coming, but here it is. The Final Chapter!_

**Disclaimer: I will give you a half-nelson if you actually think I own Naruto.**  
**I'll give myself a full-nelson if I do own it and was just lying to you all this time!**

* * *

The first sign that the village was under attack came just before dawn. Having eluded the village's early warning systems, and resting in the wilderness beyond visual range of the city, the attacking army mobilised at the first sign of the sky lightening and rushed towards the settlement in the valley between the mountains upon which Kumogakure was built. It was a comparatively small place that had built up over time as aspiring merchants and younger siblings of restaurants inheritors looked to the shinobi in the mountains to ply their trade. Kumogakure, having limited recreational facilities of its own, had reluctantly permitted the epiphyte settlement to remain as it had better quality foodstuffs (appropriate for a special occasion) and had, over time, attracted some skilled craft and tradesman.

That same, tiny, ever-buzzing hotbed of activity was the first target of the mixed-forces army assaulting Kuogakure.

Given its proximity to Kumogakure, it was only right that shinobi be sent down to maintain order in the satellite town. It was these unsuspecting sentinels that were the first to die. Hoisted into the trees by near-invisible wire nooses, quietly brought down in alleyways, or killed with fast-acting poison before they had realised they had been hit- they had all been silenced within ten minutes of the Kirigakure shinobi arriving.

So it was that the residents of the town woke and spent the first half hour of what they expected to be a normal day opening shops, watering gardens and stoking forges before they realised their situation. The mercenaries were the first to break cover, charging out of the forest to the west and bellowing undisciplined war cries. They streamed through the town, killing and pocketing small items of value. Most of the common folk died, not understanding how this could have happened, and confused as to why the Kaminari Imperial Army, in-step in their square formations, followed the mercenaries into the town, belting out a crash of unified footfalls and clacking, polished armour. The lead unit of this second force was much more thorough than the mercenaries, men systematically peeling away from formation, checking every building for survivors and dealing with any that were found, all without slowing their steady advance.

The few terrified peasants that escaped to the east were quickly and efficiently halted by the waiting Kirigakure shinobi.

* * *

Enrai, the seat of government in Kaminari no Kuni.

Enrai, the heart of trade and commercial wealth.

Enrai, the home of political intrigue.

No matter how you planned it, it was difficult to get from one part of the country to another without at least going _near _the place. Kumogakure was about as far away from where Kimimaro lived as you could get without really going out of your way into the wilderness, and while Shikamaru had plotted a route through the country that circumvented all large population centres, totally avoiding Enrai would easy add another day to the journey.

To be fair, they did only come within thirty kilometres of the city, and there was no particular reason that made it any more dangerous than a small town. The only real worry was that, if Daruma somehow escaped, he'd have a much easier time of getting away if he had a city full of people to conceal himself in.

Daruma himself had been oddly quiet and cooperative (in his silent, malevolent way), which suggested that he was waiting for just such a chance. They were going to have to keep an extra close eye on the Kirigakure shinobi while in the vicinity of Enrai.

The path they were on, meandering through the scattered houses that speckled surrounding countryside, was surprisingly choked with traffic. Grinning merchant led caravans of goods toward and away from Enrai, occasionally blocking their progress through sheer weight of numbers.

Naruto was leading the way, attempting to negotiate his way through a train of pack mules which had stalled halfway across their path. Merchants and travellers on either side of the animals grumbled and jostled each other cheerfully. The occasional shouted joke sent ripples of laughter through the mass.

While it was very different to Konoha, Ino couldn't help but feel like she was back home, helping her mother at the flower shop. The energy and good humour was refreshing, even after reuniting with some of her friends unexpectedly. The stress of the last few weeks had been weighing on her heavily, without her fully realising just how much.

Glancing to her left, Kimimaro was having trouble keeping the discomfort off his face, even through his mild-looking, straw-haired, middle-aged disguise. He was smiling, and attempting to gently jostle some rowdy silk traders, but his heart clearly wasn't in it. She smiled to herself. He really was awkward in social situations.

Feeling playful, she stepped closer and slipped her arms around one of his. He tensed in surprise, giving her a questioning look. She smiled, and rested her head on his shoulder.

'Don't worry, dear. We'll make it there in time.' Despite her fairly unassuming disguise, the nearby merchants (eager for anything that would occupy their attention while they waited for the road to clear) still complimented Kimimaro on his excellent luck in marriage. A particularly animated, ancient old man cackled something about how it would be nice to be young again before offering Kimimaro a discount on his highly varied wares.

The stir eventually calmed down, and a hush settled over the crowd. Necks craned to see what was happening further down the road, and a fair few people seemed to be hoisting their loads as high as possible and stepping carefully into the rice paddies on either side of the road. The reason became obvious quickly enough, as more and more people cleared the road.

Moving carefully, step-for-step, a procession of Kannushi were making their way down the road at what could be described as a "deliberate" pace. Ino could guess what the procession was for just by looking at it.

Two of the priests walked ahead of the rest, swinging Haraegushi from side to side in carefully measured arcs, purifying the ground for the superior Kannushi. He himself rode a horse (which also carried the ceremonial table) and was entrusted with carrying the Shintai. His composed, determined expression suggested that a god had already been invited to reside in the small wooden statue, and all of the merchants were bowing respectfully to it and the Kannushi. Behind him came the rest of the priests, holding their Shaku before them solemnly.

Everyone around them were now making to move out of the way and stand in the shin-deep mud to allow the Kannushi to pass, but for some reason Kimimaro had frozen. Even when Naruto and the others were shuffling off the path, Kimimaro just stood there, staring at the superior Kannushi.

The superior, noticing the attention he was receiving and that there was someone directly in his way, gave them what could only be described as a "stern" look. Ino nudged him in the ribs to get him moving, drawing curious looks from a few of the merchants.

Slowly, and with grace that took great patience and concentration, the Kannushi moved off down the path, Kimimaro never looking away from the superior until they were well out of sight. Then, as if on some invisible prompt, the crowd erupted into chatter and movement once again.

And only then, when the absolute silence was broken suddenly, did Daruma decide to put his plan into motion. They never did find out where he had been hiding the smoke bomb, or how he had managed to set it off while completely tied up, but in the ensuing confusion he escaped his bindings, bore Chouji to the ground in an over-balanced stranglehold, let go and pounced into the mass of activity.

Kimimaro, Ino, Sakura and Naruto were moments behind him.

* * *

'Squad three, five, seven...fire!' In near-perfect unison, the three imperial Kaminari army squads let fly an expanding wave of flaming arrows at the lower sections of Kumogakure. The oil-soaked wadding of some of the arrows snuffed out mid-flight, but enough hit surely and timber started to burn.

'Squad four, six, eight, exchange!' Squads four, six and eight immediately stepped forward, switching position with their counterparts and touching their own arrows to the braziers set up before each squad. 'Fire!' A second wave of fire swept the underside of the village structure. Flames were starting to lick outwards from the arrows, and there were shouts of alarm from above as the shinobi realised what they were doing.

Their response was quick, and decidedly direct. A light rain of mixed projectiles began falling from the village, thrown with uncanny accuracy at the firing position of the archers. A few of the weapons punctured ad caught in their raised, umbrella-shaped hats, but the majority of the weapons were intercepted well before they reached them. Several throw-weapon specialists from Kirigakure had lingered in the shadows, ready for that exact moment. Deflecting the falling weapons with deadly-accurate shuriken, they were able to effectively protect the stationary units. But they could only do so for as long as they had sufficient weapons, which they were rapidly using. The army commander ordered the six squads into cover quickly. They had completed their objective.

Meanwhile, further up the slope, the main force of the army was slowly following the frenetic advance of the mercenaries, still riding the wave of adrenaline that had been given to them by the Kirigakure shinobi in the form of Soldier Pills. Watching the rag-tag mob scramble their way up the steep set of stairs was every bit as disturbing to watch as it was disgraceful.

Kai Take watched all of this with a growing sense of disbelief and horror, wondering all the while how long it would be before the "duty officers" decided they didn't need him to be alive any more. It was a thought that distressed him more and more as time went by. Unfortunately, time hadn't seen fit to give him any stunning ideas about how to escape his predicament.

The fatigue of being continually connected to the antenna for sixteen hours was really starting to get to him, but at the same time the sheer brutality of what had happened to the town below the village was keeping him wide awake. It was a very unpleasant feeling.

At length, a distracting movement at the edge of his visual range made him adjust his focus. One of the other observers, Ennai, he guessed, was flicking his focus back and forth, getting slightly faster with each pass. It was an annoying trick he did sometimes towards the end of a shift, and Kai understood the significance. When Ennai was satisfied that the non-traitor Observers were all watching, he started slowly, painstakingly writing a message to them using his visual range like a pen on the canvas of the land.

Simply, it said; "Disconnecting... In five... Four..." Oh no. He was going to disconnect and try to cause some kind of trouble before the "duty officers" could kill him.

"Three..." And if he knew the other observers, they would do it too.

"Two..." And, damn him for it, Kai would do it too.

"One..." Because he loved his village- because _they_ loved _their_ village.

Kai pulled his mind away as fast as was possible. The nausea hit him like a waterfall, and he immediately fell to one side. Desperately trying to force his way through the dizziness, he rolled onto his feet and tried to stand, for all he was worth.

Surprisingly, nobody had killed him yet. In fact, all he could hear was the shuffling and groaning of the other Observers trying to get their wits about them. Kai managed to get enough use back into his eyes to see that the Observers were now alone in the room.

The last three Observers, excluded from the disconnection plan, but still noticing the sudden disconnection of the other five, had also disconnected and had remained seated, patiently waiting for their senses to recover.

'What the hell?' Maybe there was someone in the room with them after all. Kai looked around wildly, before concluding that the voice had come from the entrance. 'What's going on here!' the voice urged. 'The village is under attack, what's been happening in here!'

Kai tried to explain as quickly as he could, but couldn't shake the feeling that the disappearance of the six "duty officers" was not a good thing at all.

* * *

_Author's Ramblings (again): HAHA! Not Actually The Last Chapter. I was just kidding. I estimate 2-3 more chapters before the story comes to a close._


	13. Regicide

Author's Notes: Wow, this chapter was hard to write. And the more of it I wrote, the more I realised what a horrible person Daruma is.

**Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to me in the same way that 100 tonnes of gold does. Or -to put it another way- not at all.**

**

* * *

**Smart men have, on occasion, disputed the precise "nature" of a crowd of people. Some argue that it is similar in composition and though process to a patch of lichen (though lichen fails to replicate "movement" to anyone's satisfaction), while some postulate that it more closely resembles a herd of livestock.

At this time, on the outskirts of Enrai, the man known to his pursuers only as "Daruma" was leaning heavily towards the latter. As he sprinted full-tilt through the tightly packed, ever-moving streets, darting around all obstacles that came before him, he couldn't help but notice the hint of animal intelligence on the faces he saw. The civilians had all the reflexive capacity of cattle. The ones that actually noticed him took a surprised step back while their minds came to terms with what they were seeing, then began jostling everyone around them in an attempt to move out of his way. This, he imagined, was how stampedes started.

By the shouts of alarm and occasional crashes of indeterminate origin he was fairly sure that he was still being followed. And closely, at that. Relying on senses trained since an early age and honed through perilous encounters, he let his injured leg collapse- just enough to make him stumble to the right but not fall. A zigzag of kunai stitched itself into the ground he would have occupied if not for the stumble. They had been thrown from a high angle at a gap in the crowd (so as not to involve the bystanders [again reminding him that his pursuers were far too soft]) which he surely would have exploited if not for his hunch. He scrabbled at the ground with all his limbs like a dog and shot off in another direction, scattering civilians as he went. Nowhere near enough to shake the Konoha shinobi, but it gave him a moment to prepare.

His plan, while somewhat complicated, involved techniques no more sophisticated than an average Genin would be able to pull off, but together gave him a very good chance of escaping, or at least putting some distance between himself and his hunters. He grinned and started hastily forming seals with his hands as he ran. As foolish and immature as the Konoha shinobi seemed to him, they weren't completely stupid. He'd have to make this convincing.

* * *

Shikmaru made a dissatisfied noise with his tongue and fished around in his pack for another set of kunai. Daruma must have had the senses of an animal to understand how much danger he was in before the knives even left Shikamaru's hand. Trying a long-distance attack on a fleeing enemy was a very unreliable method of capture, but there wasn't much else he could do at the moment. The streets were packed, and Daruma was making sure he was always on the far side of a civilian. He would have liked to use Kagamane to stop him moving around, but he couldn't do that while running, and it was unlikely that his shadow could keep up with Daruma in any case.

He set off along the rooftops, hoping for another opportunity to present itself. Chouji had managed to catch up, and was only a little way behind him, with the rest of their group farther ahead, attempting to get ahead of Daruma. This sudden change of direction had taken them by surprise, and they were now jumping from roof-to-roof to retake their lead. Unfortunately, it seemed Daruma had plans of his own.

A cloud of smoke appeared around Daruma suddenly, causing a commotion with the nearby civilians. Then, what Shikamaru had been expecting to happen for some time now, happened. Five identical copies of Daruma leapt onto a roof, trailing smoke behind them, and started off in different directions. By dint of having anticipated this, Shikamar was able to accurately hit one of them with shuriken before it had completed its second jump. It collapsed into a mass of water that fell to the street below (much to the confusion of an unlucky shopkeeper), as did a second one that had strayed too close to Kimimaro and received a kick to the back of the head. That left four... _at least _four. Shikamaru made eye contact with Chouji and gestured with his hand. Chouji, understanding the message, set off after the Daruma Sakura was chasing. Naruto, Ino and Kimimaro were already after the remaining three. Shikamaru had other ideas about how to get the real Daruma, however. The possibility that it was one of the clones that had run couldn't be ignored, but he suspected that Daruma was still down there. Once the smoke dissipated, he started looking for anything unusual. And he found it, too.

A man, bearing no resemblance to Daruma whatsoever, was engaged in hasty conversation with an uncomfortable-looking old man. That in itself wasn't strange- that was happening everywhere, but the younger man was definitely making the old man nervous somehow. Shikamaru couldn't tell what it was from a distance, but he was willing to bet it had something to do with Daruma being an arrogant, condescending, foreign professional killer. He put his hands together and began stretching his shadow towards the suspicious man. He seemed to notice the shadow when it was a few feet away and tried to dodge it, which was all the proof Shikamaru needed. He hastened the lengthening of his shadow and caught the man before he had a chance to escape.

Grinning to himself, Shikamaru hopped off the building he was standing on and observed the man copy all of his movements apart from the change in elevation.

'Kawarimi no Jutsu has succeeded. That you, Daruma?' he asked, expecting an answer along the lines of "I don't know what you are talking about." Daruma surprised him by not bothering.

'Yup, you got me, Nara-san,' he said cheerfully. Shikamaru paused, not quite sure of how to respond to that. Daruma obliged by continuing, 'what was it that gave me away?'

'...Your people skills.' All the occupants of the street were now keeping a safe, but clearly audible distance to take advantage of what practically amounted to Street Theatre as far as they were concerned.

Daruma snorted. 'Figures... Where are the others, by the way? Off chasing clones, I guess? You sure you can take me on all by yourself?'

'I seem to have the advantage at the moment,' Shikamaru replied matter-of-factly, using part of his own shadow to slip a kunai from the pouch on his belt. He took it in his hand, so that only he was armed. He could attack Daruma at will, and all Daruma could do was make silly hand gestures in return.

'Oh? Your ability isn't as useless as I though it was. But...'  
'Suiton:' another voice said behind and above Shikamaru. 'Bakusui Shouha!' Shikamaru turned and looked up just in time to see a torrent of water issuing from the mouth of what could only have been Daruma or one of his clones transformed to look like a regular person before it hit him. The force of the water easily knocked him flat and broke his concentration, ending his Kagemane and freeing the first Daruma, who staggered for a moment before pouncing on Shikamaru. He quickly took advantage of Shikamaru's temporary impotence, pinning his legs and arms in a way that made moving them difficult, and using techniques practically impossible.

'Hehehaa...' Daruma huffed with a crazed look in his eye, a trickle of drool escaping the corner of his mouth. 'You lived up to my expectations, Nara! But you know what happens now, right?'

'Yeah. You get beaten up by my support.' Daruma almost had enough time too look confused or surprised before a hand the size of his entire body swatted him neatly off Shikamaru and into a wall. 'Nice save, Chouji.'

'Of course...hmm?' Removing his oversized hand from the now damaged wall, Chouji found that Daruma had been replaced by nothing more substantial than a puddle of water. 'Mizu bunshin?'

Shikamar spat out of irritation, getting wetly to his feet and dripping indignantly on the street. 'Damn, I though that was the real one. But...that only leaves one more...' he turned back to the Daruma that had used the water elemental technique on him, and was mildly surprised to see him still standing there on the roof with a smug smile plastered on his face.

'Hehe. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not...' whatever happened to the clone at that moment seemed to come as a surprise. The smug smile disappeared and its eyes took on a bemused, vacant quality that suggested it had taken leave of its senses. For a moment, it looked like it was about to continue speaking, but then it became transparent and finally lost the ability to hold its shape entirely.

The assembled crowd, which had been watching the whole thing quietly, even when they got a little wet from the water technique, took this as a fabulous end to the scene and immediately began cheering and applauding enthusiastically.

'Good work Nara-sama!'  
'The water-user was an unusual villain, but I liked it!'  
'"Nice save," Chouji-sama!'  
'Are you filming a sequel to _Dokonjou Ninden_?'  
'Can you please sign this, for my son?'

'Nnghktssh-a-ffsshhhk...ru-chhkt-hear me?' Now that sounded important, particularly because the voice and static were coming from the short-distance communicator in Shikamaru's ear. Shikamaru pressed on the collar he was wearing, activating the microphone.

'Sakura?'

'The one I was chasing was a clone; it collapsed on its own before I could catch it.' That was a very useful piece of information. The clones had gone off in different directions, and since Mizu Bunshin had a limited active range from the user, he could work out where the real Daruma was.

'How long ago was this?'

'No more than three minutes.' Shikamaru did the math in his head. He didn't like the answer he got.

* * *

'Hmm... That's the last clone gone.' Daruma glanced over his shoulder. 'But this bitch is still following me...' Stricktly speaking, his mission was over the moment he was captured by the Konoha shinobi, and it was likely that the overall plan had already succeeded...or failed, whatever. Either way, he was done with this stupid country, and damned if he was going to let those leaf idiots catch him again. From the few days he had been in their custody, their confrontations and overheard conversations, he had a reasonably good idea of all their abilities. He was sure as hell lucky that Yamanaka was the one following him. Taking over someone else's body definitely had its uses, but it wasn't something she could use on him carelessly in this situation. In other words: he had the upper hand. And it was already a demonstrated fact that he was more than a match for her in single combat. She also knew this, which was probably why she was keeping her distance and being overly-cautious. There were, of course, ways around that.

Stopping short at the edge of the next roof, he jumped directly down, back to street level. Yamanaka, very wisely, did not follow him, instead she jumped to an adjacent roof then across the street. Which was, more-or-less, precisely what Daruma wanted her to do.

Using chakra to boost the strength of his legs (but going easy on the injured one), he sprang towards her predicted landing point the moment he saw her start across the street. The look on her face just before he kneed her in the chest was priceless.

* * *

The Raikage was not happy. Though an old man, he was storming through the access corridors of Kumogakure like a man possessed, letting nothing hinder his progress. Shinobi coming to him for direction or giving situation reports were immediately swept into his wake and left behind if found to be too slow. His village was under attack, and there was no way in hell he wasn't going to kill his fair share of invaders, no matter who they were.

'Raikage-sama!' came a voice somewhere behind the mass of people following him. 'Raika- let me through damn it! Raikage-sama!'

'What is it?' the Raikage snapped, not slowing down.

'I've just returned from the Observation Point-'

'Report, quickly.'

'All dead, Raikage-sama. It seems to have happened shortly after you ordered the doors sealed.'

Everything was starting to fall into place now. Tennji Nendo's murder, and the inconsistency of the last time he was seen alive. The failure of the messenger dispatched to Konoha to report back. The Kirigakure shinobi near the border. All of it had been leading up to this, but the Raikge would have previously thought the situation laughable.

'If I may be so bold, Raikage-sama...' the shinobi that had come to make the report started carefully.

'What now?'

'Should we not consider...negotiations?'

'Are you insane? The village is under attack! There won't be any negotiations!'

'...I'm sorry to hear that, Raikage-sama...' Realisation dawned on the Raikage in a split second. He stopped walking for the first time since he left his office. He had to. The number of steel weapons piercing him while still being gripped firmly by the handle did not allow him to continue forward.

'...Why-'

'Know this, Godaime Raikage-sama: your death is for the sake of both Kumogakure no Sato and Kaminari no Kuni.'

Figuring that the pain was the least of his worries at this point, the Raikage turned his head as much as he could, so that he might see his killers.

'...Hourai?'

'...Goodbye, Raikage-sama.'


	14. Retreat

Author's Notes: Ah...I wrote the second half of this chapter in 2011. Yeah. 6 months to write 1000 words. 0д0

**Disclaimer: I do not, nor have I ever owned Naruto or any official characters, though I would like to.**

Ino made a strange noise as the air was forced out of her lungs. It was one of those noises that the human throat was never quite designed for, and she would never be able to replicate or describe the noise properly as long as she lived. She collapsed involuntarily, only avoiding the hammer blow of Daruma's swinging fist by chance. She hit the roof, and rolled desperately away before the Kirigakure shinobi split the tiles beneath her with a booted heel. He was on his feet, though. And she could barely move. She tried to suck in more air unsuccessfully as her deflated lungs refused to deform themselves correctly.

'You _are_ a persistent woman, aren't you?' he asked, almost casually, following her with calm eyes. Ino tried to get to her knees as she continued to fight her lungs. Daruma sighed sardonically before taking a carefully measured step towards her. Ino's arms came up in a defensive gesture automatically, even before his other foot suddenly shot forward in a curving arc that that forced her guarding forearms into her ribs and sent her sliding away, towards the edge of the roof. A sound she heard at the moment of contact let her know that he had broken something, but everything hurt so much that she couldn't tell what. On the plus side: the pressure to the side of her torso had, somehow, persuaded one of her lungs to inflate.

She coughed dryly once or twice and rolled onto her hands and knees. She had a vague notion that hopping over the side of the roof might give her a chance to regain a chance to...well, to run away, she supposed unhappily. The awning was fairly close, but when she reached out a hand to grasp at it, a violent stab of pain let her know what it was that Daruma had broken. She gritted her teeth against the pain, and tried her other arm.

'Oohh-no you don't,' Daruma chided, as though talking to a particularly adventurous child. She didn't have to see him to know that he had grabbed her ponytail, since the facts that her scalp suddenly hurt a lot, and her head was being lifted up and away from the ledge, left very little to her imagination. Her uninjured arm continued to reach for the ledge, hopelessly. 'I'm thinking you might just be my ticket out of here. But,' he trailed off for effect, and in order to twist one of her arms behind her back and draw her ear close to his mouth so that he could whisper the next part. 'I figure you'll be more "cooperative" if you're unconscious. With one eye already screwed shut in pain, since the arm he had chosen to twist was also the one that was broken, Ino had no idea by what means Daruma administered unconsciousness on her, but her body was completely limp a moment later.

Pausing only to hoist his human baggage over a shoulder, Daruma leapt away, a huge grin spread across his heavily bruised and blood-crusted face.

* * *

Kimimaro stopped running the moment he saw the clone of Daruma he had been chasing collapse into a mass of water halfway between buildings. The water cascaded to the street below, which was uncharacteristically deserted, and he heard Naruto land next to him.

'Damn,' he said irritably, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder- no doubt worried about Haruno Sakura. It hadn't taken Kimimaro long to figure out that he was infatuated with the pink-haired Iryou-nin, and had taken considerably less time to realise that the feeling was not reciprocated.

Using his obvious powers of deduction, he had also decided that the reason Naruto had stuck to his side like they were joined at the leg was because Shikamaru had decided that would be...prudent. Despite everything, it was obvious the broody, intelligent konoha shinobi didn't completely trust him. And Kimimaro couldn't help but appreciate his caution.

'Hey, I think we'd better get back to the others now,' Naruto suggested, looking back the way they had come again. Kimimaro would have been a step ahead of him already, had he not noticed something he wouldn't normally have. Here and there between the buildings, twisting around any serviceable protrusion, and being only slightly more visible than spider's silk, tiny threads had been carefully and inoffensively strung on the structures around them. And now they were silently going taught and creating an innocuously closed space. Naruto did not press his suggestion of leaving, as he had realised that the situation was more complicated than he had taken it to be. Kimimaro wasn't sure whether or not to reassess his impression of the blonde youth.

That thought, however, was forcefully put to one side by the distinctive, graveyard chuckle of Tsukasa. 'Huhuahahahaa... What luck! I was afraid you would change direction before you got here.' A line snapped tight to Kimimaro's right and began making the high-pitched creaking sounds of drawn material under lateral stress. 'I was hoping your friend would have stopped following by the time you got here, however...' a few more lines snapped tight close to Naruto, forcing him to take a backward step towards Kimimaro. '...I don't mind killing you both at the same time.' Tsukasa said that last part in a flat, dangerous tone that promised a speedy and bloody conclusion to his speech.

'Naruto,' Kimimaro said under his breath. 'Be ready to jump down.' Naruto nodded to show he had heard him, even if he didn't quite know what Kimimaro meant by it yet. Not wanting to waste any of the time Tsukasa was giving them, Kimimaro took a deep breath, gathered as much of his chakra as was sensible and threw up his arms. For just a moment, both Nauto and Tsukasa must have thought he was giving up.

'Sawarabi no Mai!' he punctuated the last word by stamping his foot. Tsukasa's gloating and surprise cost him the advantage as Kimimaro disappeared beneath the surface of a huge, coral-like bone structure that grew from him with a movement not unlike a tree growing sped up a thousand times. Tsukasa finally sprang his trap, too late. The almost-invisible lines jittered and skipped along the surface of the bone before breaking as it plunged downward, its sheer weight dropping it through the structure of the building. Kimimaro thought he heard Tsukasa shout in rage, but realised it was actually screams of excited laughter.

Naruto, somehow managing to avoid the sharp corners of the bone tree and the slicing threads that were still snapping to attention all around, hit the floor of the level below and rolled out of the way before the blunt mass of bone smashed down a second later. Tsukasa must have anticipated a downward escape attempt as there were lines here too. However, they were far sparser, and hadn't been intended to stand up against the tree. Several of them were pinned to the smashed floor, and struggled fruitlessly against the intense weight pinning them in place.

Naruto stared at the smooth, white surface, trying to come to terms with it. When Kimimaro's face and torso began detaching themselves from it, he was less intimidated.

'You could have warned me you were going to do that!'

While Kimimaro was trying to decide how best to respond to that assertion, part of the already dusty hallway they were in collapsed in a shower of splintered stone and wood. A figure, bent over on all fours, was at the epicentre.

'Kuhuhu, I never knew you could do that, Kaguya,' Tsukasa oozed, sounding oddly cheery as he said it. 'That makes this all the more interesting!' His right hand whipped out and a long, black cord wrapped itself around Kimimaro's abdomen. With another jerk of his arm, he drew the rope back, tearing Kimimaro the rest of the way out of the bone structure and hurling him against a wall. After spinning him around once or twice the rope lost its hold on him and sprang back to Tsukasa. He grinned and watching Kimimaro regain his feet and extend the bone spikes from his hands.

Having been out of sight for most of the exchange, Naruto came charging down the hall straight at Tsukasa who shifted his attention from Kimimaro just long enough to bring up his arm in a warding gesture. Just when Naruto thought he was going to resolve the situation by himself, Tsukasa straightened his arm, pointing a clawed hand at him. 'Hane-Ken no Jutsu.'

One moment the hand was empty, with Naruto less than ten feet away, leaping through the air with a kunai in each hand. The next moment, a glossy grey ripple of movement shot forward and skewered Naruto through the chest. Tsukasa snorted in smug satisfaction. Then Naruto's body disappeared in a cough of smoke. Tsukasa's eyes grew huge as the mass of hair he had thought had killed the young man flopped weightily to the floor, and he noticed the ring of orange above him descending from all directions. To his credit, he reacted admirably.

With a quick half turn, he flung out both his arms to his sides and a fan of spines resembling straight strands of hair spread out from him, following the arc described by his sweeping arms. Again, the multiple copies of Naruto vanished when hit. Tsukasa clenched his teeth, still not quite understanding. That was when the real Naruto, thrown by still more clones, hit him in the back with Rasengan. He flew straight through the stone wall in a tangle of hair, curses and broken masonry.

Sufficiently impressed by Naruto's tactics, Kimimaro jumped through the hole in the wall, intent on making sure Tsukasa wouldn't be getting back up.

* * *

'What's that?' the Lord of Thunder asked in bombastic surprise. He had heard the attendant quite clearly, but the news was such a welcome surprise that he wanted to hear it again. The attendant, used to this, repeated the announcement that Lord Raitengeki was requesting an audience. 'Oh, Raitengeki! Show him in, at once!' the Lord of Thunder ordered with growing excitement. He had been troubled, as of late, what with so many of the country's Lords dying under questionable circumstances. He had been so distraught that he had ordered a summons for every noble of the country to come with all haste to the Imperial Palace. He had been extremely frustrated when most of the messengers he dispatched were never seen or heard from again, so he was more than happy to see that Lord Raitengeki, a sensible and loyal man, had managed to make it all the way here from his remote land holdings. With a titter of contention, he flipped open his favourite fan, rose from his throne began descending the broad stairs before it, intending to meet Lord Raitengeki at the foot of them. His girth prevented him from doing so in any decent amount of time and when he finally reached the bottom of the stairs, huffing and puffing, Lord Raitengeki was waiting politely for him.

'Raitengeki-dono,' he said breathlessly, left hand fanning himself furiously. Lord Raitengeki bowed deeply, apparently determined to go through all the fanfare required of such an occasion, despite the Lord of Thunder's good mood. 'Now, now,' he began again, waving his fan dismissively. 'Let's not burden ourselves with tradition. I've been most anxiously awaiting your arrival.'

'You honour me, My Lord,' Lord Raitengeki said, straightening up slowly. His voice was flat and crisp, as always, and carried a certain degree of dignity that the Lord of Thunder always found reassuring...

It was then that the Lord of Thunder noticed something very unusual. Lord Raitengeki, while tastefully dressed, had decided to adorn his clothes with a most sinister accessory. From his belt protruded a paired Katana and Wakizashi.

Strange...

The Lord of Thunder was just about to comment on it when Lord Raitengeki laid a hand delicately on the Katana's handle, unsheathed it, split the Lord of Thunder completely in half, and re-sheathed it in one terrifyingly precise movement. The grand hall fell completely silent, save for the splashing of liquid on the wood floor, and the heavy impact of the Lord of Thunder's corpse.

Lord Raitengeki then did what any sensible man would have done. He had the former Lord of Thunder's most trusted advisors executed. Even in the shocked silence, the Kirigakure no Sato shinobi that descended from the rafters made absolutely no noise.

At least, until they got hold of their intended victims.


	15. Dynasty

Author's Notes: Don't look at me like that. I am FULLY aware of how long it has been since the last update. But I have been doing some writing here and there. As you may know, I rolled out a post-epilogue-epilogue for Shikotsumyaku on the first day of this year. I've also been working on an as-yet unveiled story with a minimum of ten thousand words per chapter (I'll admit to being little stuck on chapter 4 [which may be re-classified as chapter 7 depending on how things go] right now.) Still, I managed to come up with a way to make this chapter go the way I wanted it to. Stay tuned for another chapter sometime soon(-er).

**Disclaimer: Look into my eyes and tell me that I do own Naruto. Can you withstand the burning waves of **** "I ****don't believe you"?**

* * *

Tsukasa tried to find his feet as he sailed backwards through the air. His foot slipped on a piece of shattered masonry, that was itself moving, and he continued tumbling backwards until he came to rest in the ruined remains of a previously intact table. He fought a fit of coughing, trying to ignore the pain in his chest which was almost certainly a broken rib. With a hasty sweep of his arm, he threw one of the black hair ropes at the hole in the wall he had made on his passage through it, and then wrenched it back hard. Imbued with the power of his Bloodline, Touhatsujyuu, the rope wrapped itself around Kimimaro's midsection and then dragged him forward with all the strength Tsukasa could muster. Kimimaro took a wild stab at him on his way past, which clipped Tsukasa's shoulder, before slamming into the far wall. Then the other one(s), with orange clothes and blonde hair, were coming though as well.

Gathering all of his available strength, Tsukasa lurched to his feet- using the movement to send his red hair fanning outwards in a rippling, razor-edged arc. The hair hit a few of them, and there was the unmistakable twitch of contact, but the bodies summarily burst into smoke. A few of them managed to duck or jump clear and made to come at him again.

Having been given a moment to think, Tsukasa had already begun his escape plan. At the same time he was attacking the clones, he had simultaneously been cutting a hole in the floor, which he fell through before he was in any real danger of a counter-attack. Or would have been, if Kimimaro had been even slightly slower to recover.

A pale spike of bone, followed by a pale hand, came at him as he fell. It grazed his shoulder, in almost exactly the same place as before, but this time it also slipped through and under his shirt. The tip of the spike lanced into the side of the hole in the floor, and Tsukasa's rapid descent abruptly stopped, hanging by a piece of his his shirt no wider than his hand. Kimimaro, of course, used this opportunity to attempt to impale him.

Tsukasa flung up a forearm to protect his face, and the bone spike met the thick, straw-coloured hair woven into the inside of his clothes. Even its remarkable defensive properties failed to stop the bone spike completely. The tip punched through and carried on to strike his forehead, but the killing blow was dulled to a deep gash that started bleeding profusely. Before Kimimaro could strike again, the fabric of Tsukasa's shirt gave out and he fell the rest of the way to the floor below.

Managing somehow to not land incredibly awkwardly and twist an ankle, he rolled back to his feet and then jumped at the nearest window as hard as he could. He decided that he should at least be able to find his feet outside before Kimimaro could disengage himself from the floor and come after him again.

His plan only had one flaw: as he threw himself at the window, braced to smash the glass with his body, he failed to notice that the orange-wearing blonde was coming in from the other side.

The blonde shattered the window while Tsukasa was still coming to terms with this- a process that was interrupted by a pair of feet blasting into his chest. Then, since it seemed to be the only thing that he was any good at that day, Tsukasa smashed through another wall. And this time he didn't even have time to dig himself out of the wreckage before someone kicked him in the face. Now seeing red, and almost completely unable to breathe, Tsukasa coughed up a mouthful of blood and tried to steady himself against a wall.

He sensed, more than saw, the tip of something sharp being pointed directly at his forehead. Without moving his head in any direction, he cleared his throat and spat a gob of blood on the floor in front of himself. Or onto his leg, he wasn't quite sure.

'Give up, Tsukasa. You had your chance,' came the distinctive, flat tone that Kimimaro so liked to use when trying to intimidate people. And that made the whole situation worthwhile.

'Hn. Hmhmmhmhm. Ahhhahaha. Haha-'

'What's so funny?!' Ohh, Kimimaro must not have found it as funny as Tsukasa did. He couldn't help it, of course. And, while killing Kimimaro would have been icing on the cake, the way things had turned out was also acceptable.

'HAH- nothing!' Tsukasa let a wide grin pass across his lips. 'It's just amusing: how little things have changed. Here we are, fighting- you always being stronger and faster,' he said the last part with a hint of melancholy, slowly raising his face to look at his old nemesis.

Kimimaro could hardly be blamed for recoiling slightly. The gash on Tsukasa's forehead was staining his already scarlet hair a deep crimson. Blood was also tricking down his face and into his eyes, some of the blood-tears tricking into the corners of his disturbingly wide grin. The best word to describe his appearance would have been "ghastly."

'Always strong enough to beat me up,' he continued. 'But this time...' his eyes widened with every word and he stretched his neck towards Kimimaro as he whispered the most important part:

'I. Still. Beat. You.'

* * *

Daruma, buoyed by his recent run of luck, decided that this was the perfect opportunity to call in his backup. Since he had overpowered the Yamanaka girl, he seemed to have managed to stay ahead of the pursuers which were, without a _shadow_ of a doubt, coming after him all the same. There was the minor issue of his leg, which was starting to hurt like a bastard now that his adrenaline rush was wearing off. He had, it seemed, abused the shit out of it in his mad rush to escape capture. It had paid off in the end, but that would hardly make it better just by giving him a smug sense of satisfaction.

Fishing around in the girl's hip satchel awkwardly as he ran, he managed to find an exploding seal. Must have been about the only damned one she hadn't tried to kill him with on their first meeting. He abruptly forced himself to focus on something else; it was hardly worth getting upset about that now.

Using some fancy finger-work (and his teeth, where necessary) he tied the exploding tag to a kunai, activated the tag, and hurled them both as high as he could. The tag detonated well above him with a crack that sent the kunai it had been affixed to spinning end over end until it came to rest on a rooftop somewhere. But that should have been all the signal he needed to give- both to let his pursuers know _exactly_ where he was (not that they weren't tracking him already), but also to alert the Kirigakure shinobi standing by in Enrai that something was going on.

He _had_ been out of the loop for a while, and he was royally screwed if his colleague tasked with watching the Imperial Castle had been pulled for another assignment, but Daruma was feeling lucky. Very lucky.

He decided that was a very stupid thing to feel almost immediately. His bad leg unexpectedly refused to work for a moment, just when he was attempting to land with it (probably a bad idea to begin with), and he stumbled painfully before regaining his feet and running on. His stumble drove his shoulder hard into the girl's stomach, who gave an "oohf" of discomfort.

Crap. It would be bad if she woke up now.

And, just to prove exactly how lucky he wasn't, wake up was exactly what she proceeded to do. Doubtlessly the action was inspired by years of experience, combat training, knowledge of anatomy, and sheer wit. In a true showing of expert assassination techniques, Yamanaka Ino reached down Daruma's back, grabbed his sides between his ribcage and hip, and pinched him for all she was worth.

Pain, shock, and a spontaneous urge to defend himself against the completely unprecedented attack overwhelmed Daruma's determination and clove his concentration apart. For just a moment his entire body convulsively attempted to assume a foetal position before his better judgement had time to override the action. And, in his haste to both escape his assailant's clutches and stop himself from face-planting into the very solid, stone rooftop, Daruma hurled Ino away from himself and turned his fall into the most awkward roll possible.

Even before he finished moving, he knew he wasn't going to be able to stand back up. His much-abused leg, battered and bloodied, and choking on toxic levels of lactic acid, had been too surprised by the sudden emergency signal sent to from the brain which totally contradicted its current instructions. Its resultant, berserk movements had finally pushed it past the limits of endurance, and had seized up. Maybe he would be able to move his foot in a few minutes, if he was _lucky_, but not straight away.

The pain in his sides had gone away as quickly as it had come, and it would probably be best if he didn't stay curled up in a ball now that the Yamanaka girl was awake. Carefully, but urgently, he manoeuvred himself around his frozen leg and into a sitting position. The girl was having trouble enough of her own, it seemed.

* * *

Ino slid across the roof after landing on her back. Daruma hadn't exactly had her well-being in mind when he threw her, and her head had bounced off the stone painfully when she first landed. The impact nearly knocked her out again and she struggled to prop herself up on her arms. She was once again reminded that her arm was broken, forcing her to rely on one arm only. At least her legs were alright, and it looked like she couldn't say the same for Daruma.

She could see that his leg was crooked oddly to one side, and he was trying to lift himself up with just the other leg and his arms. When he saw her watching him, he decided to kneel instead. He glared at her, rage smouldering in his eyes.

'You just don't know when to quit, do you?' she spat, gingerly raising herself into a standing position. That earned a grin from Daruma.

'Oh, I think we both know how this is going to end,' he said, clasping his hands together and forming a set of hand-seals. 'Suiton: Bakusui Shouha!' Saying so, and cheeks bulging grossly, Daruma vomited a pool of water onto the roof before him. But his hands were still moving. 'Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu!' The trickle of water stopped moving completely for a moment, before it started lifting itself off the roof and forming a silhouette of Daruma.

Ino, had she known just how many water clones he had made via this process, and how much of his chakra he had distributed between them, would have been surprised that he had enough chakra left for this latest trick. Daruma was being vary careful to conceal his fatigue as best he could, so the performance was at least a little worrying to her.

She took a step back. The now solidified clone of Daruma, rose and took a step towards her. The fact that the clone was between herself and Daruma made it impossible for her to use Shintenshin- but then it was still just a clone. Even a water clone, while able to physically attack her, was only ever fractionally strong compared to the original. So, while Daruma could probably still beat her to a pulp, he was temporarily disabled and his clone would be feeble at best. She drew a single kunai from her pouch with her good arm and threw it hard at the clone's chest.

For a moment she wasn't sure if she had imagined it or not, but Daruma's reaction confirmed her suspicion. The clone's body started losing its integrity a split second before the Kunai even hit it. The water it was made of, resisting the Kunai moving through it while also starting to fall, robbed the weapon of its momentum and altered the direction it was moving just enough that when it passed through the collapsing clone's body it arched lazily downwards and clattered to a halt just out of Daruma's reach.

Leaning forward awkwardly and visibly wincing at the pain in his leg as he crawled forward the short distance to reach it, Daruma snatched up the Kunai before resuming his kneeling position. After settling himself, he gave Ino a cocky smile and started tossing the kunai from one hand to the other.

_Great work, Ino. He still can't move, but now he has a weapon again._


	16. Retribution

Author's notes: Bit of a short chapter, this time. And not too exciting, but it's a lead-up to the following chapter, which may well be the final chapter of this fanfiction.  
Stay tuned!

**Disclaimer: If you think I own Naruto you are, pardon my English, a silly-sod.**

* * *

The Kumogakure no Sato shinobi, representing the Raikage, sat formally in front of the Throne of Lightning and bowed until his forehead protector made contact with the floor. The new Lord of Thunder watched the display impassively, trying to guess how productive this conversation was likely to be. All it really came down to was a formality, but the man might be able to provide more information than he had previously thought.

'I bring sincerest greeting from the Raikage,' the man began, straightening back into a sitting position and rattling off the well-rehearsed line. The Lord of Thunder accepted the greetings with a gracious nod of his head, and the representative continued.

'The Raikage wishes to express his dismay and regrets over the recent death of Lord Mabou. He also wishes to assure you that the circumstances surrounding his death were only made possible by the lax security policies of the Fifth Raikage. The Sixth Raikage will allow no such breach of security to happen again.'

'I see.' The Lord of Thunder let the words hang for a moment, but the Kumogakure representative remained perfectly still, waiting for a formal response.

'Let me also assure the Sixth Raikage that I had no knowledge of the attack launched against his village. Upon learning of the actions taken by my predecessor, Lord Mabou, I immediately cut orders to the Kaminari Imperial Army's Second Regiment in order to ascertain who it was that led the assault.

'Five officers were identified as being hand-picked by Lord Mabou specifically for the attack. I am told that they were brave men who would not refuse the orders given to them, but also knew their orders were heinous. It seems that all five men, after completing their attack on Kumogakure no Sato, all committed Seppuku to atone for their crimes.

'I hope that will lay any concerns the Raikage may have about the Throne of Thunder's stance towards his village to rest.'

'Thank you, My Lord,' the representative bowed his head again. 'I believe that will allow the Raigake to find some solace.'

Framing Mabou had been one of the Lord of Thunder's better ideas, he thought. And it has been a simple matter to have Tsukasa intercept a few official communiques and forge the official seal. As for the Fifth Raikage, the man sitting before him couldn't possibly know if Hourai's coup d'etat had succeeded or not yet (just as the Lord of Thunder had no idea if the army captains he had mentioned were even dead yet or not. But arrangements had been made). What the Lord of Thunder had really wanted to know was, should Hourai fail and the Fifth Raikage survived, would this "representative" be executed as a traitor along with Hourai? Asking that during an official meeting would be unseemly, however. And the man hadn't seen any need to bring the subject up on his own.

The Lord of Thunder's thoughts, and official meeting, were interrupted by a commotion at the front of the hall. There had been a few people standing around there for some time, hoping to lick enough boots to gain themselves more political clout, but it seemed that a new arrival had just burst in. He seemed to be a tad battered, and a pair of guards were trying to shoo the man out before he had a chance to bleed on anything expensive.

The apparition seemed to take exception to this. A lazy kick sent one of the heavily armoured men toppling backwards with comical slowness, and the other was thrown aside with easy contempt. Now free from the temporary delay, the man started running up the long stairs towards the throne. Neither the Lord of Thunder, the other guards around the room, or the representative from Kumogakure attempted to stop him. When he finally reached the throne, he threw himself to the floor next to the Kumogakure shinobi in a tumble of bloody robes and bowed respectfully to the Lord of Thunder, his forehead pressed hard to the polished wood.

'My Lord!'

'...You look terrible,' the Lord of Thunder replied dryly, amusedly watching the Kumogakure representative discreetly shuffle away from the bloody mess he now found himself next to.

'Yes my lord!' the frantic man conceded before ploughing on. 'I have terrible news! Kimimaro has betrayed you!' This news _did_ draw a shocked reaction from the Lord of Thunder.

'What?!' he demanded in a tone of total disbelief, standing suddenly and descending the stairs to stand in front of the man.

Completely hidden by the overly-long sleeves he habitually wore, a wide, horrible grin spread across Tsukasa's face.

* * *

The radio spat another hiss of static into Naruto's ear. 'AaaaaAAH! Why won't this thing work!'

Kimimaro understood his frustration, but he didn't think yelling at the device and waving it around would make it work any better. That being said, he wasn't too familiar with radios, so he could well have been wrong about that.

The radio stuttered some more static, a half-coherent word, then more static. 'DAAAAAAHH!'

Kimimaro also had other things to worry about. Like what direction they were running. They couldn't really do anything other than go back towards the place they had all split up to chase Daruma, and hope they managed to get in touch with one of the others.

Theoretically, the radio should have made that easier, but Naruto was having little luck reaching anyone else. Naruto growled at it and tapped at it furiously.

But Kimimaro was also thinking about the last encounter with Tsukasa, and the bad taste it left in his mouth.

_'If you kill me, I've left instructions for Lord Raitengeki to be delivered a special letter. One that informs him that I've stumbled upon your plan to try and stop him him from claiming the Throne. And that all your friends in that filthy little peasant village are involved as well!'_

Damn him. He'd probably tell Raitengeki a variation of that anyway- one that didn't include the town in the woods near his home, at least. Still, if the lives of all those people that had supported Kimimaro's lonely life could be saved, merely at the cost of letting Tsukasa stay alive, it was a price he was willing to pay.

'WHAAT? Shikamaru? Oi! Can you hear me?' Naruto was shouting into his audio pickup excitedly now. He must have gotten some kind of response. Naruto waited a few more seconds, until the radio put out another wave of static, before he started yelling again. In fact, he probably would have ripped the damn thing off and stomped on it if not for Shikamaru's sudden appearance.

He was heading in the opposite direction they were, and wore a deeply irritated expression. He was also dripping wet, which might have explained his irritation. When he saw Naruto and Kimimaro he immediately changed direction and waved for them to follow him. Kimimaro thought the direction might have been east.

'Naruto,' Shikamaru shouted over his shoulder before they quite managed to catch up to him. 'My radio's out-of-action, lend me yours.

'Huh? Uh, alright...' Naruto fumbled with the compact radio's clips for a moment before tossing it accurately to Shikamaru, who caught it deftly.

'Thanks, it got wet while I was dealing with some of Daruma's clones. I was trying to raise you the whole way here, but I couldn't tell if you got anything.' That certainly explained all the static and fragmentary words Naruto had been receiving.

'Anyway, it looks like Ino was the one who ended up chasing the real Daruma. Sakura and Chouji have gone on ahead. If we hurry, we might be able to catch them.'

* * *

Daruma spat irritably while he weighed his odds. From where he stood (knelt), they appeared to be decidedly _not_ in his favour.

After tricking the blonde kunoichi into providing him with a weapon, she had turned the tables on him. Rather than just pelting him with more kunai (which is what he was hoping she would do), she had opted to use a little ninjutsu instead. And here "little" was a technical term.

Bunshin no Jutsu was the adolescent little brother of Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu, the clones created were insubstantial- literally illusions and nothing more. It did take a significantly lesser ammount of chakra to perform, however, so he was now staring down seven identical copies of the girl. Identical down to the minor injuries, ruffled hair, and apparently-injured arm (that was something to keep an eye out for, at least).

It soon became apparent what she wanted to do; surround him. This was, to say the least, the opposite of what Daruma wanted. Unfortunately, he had no practical way of stopping her, so he needed to focus on trying to counter whatever attack came his way. His only concern was that, while six of the clones were surrounding him, one of the was hanging back with a kunai at the ready. It was such a transparent decoy she was practically telling him that it was a clone. Still, it was _so_ obvious that she might have been trying to pull a double-bluff on him... This was going to be tricky.

His first warning that trouble was about to start was a tiny, almost completely unnoticeable movement the clone furthest away. A minor change in posture that he barely noticed, but rang warning bells in the back of his mind. He couldn't help but flick his eyes in its direction briefly, and that was when the real attack started.

Even while distracted he noticed two clones in front of and on either side of him jump forward to attack. But what he also noticed was the clone directly to his left raise its arms to painfully form an indistinct shape between its hands. He didn't know what that was, but he was willing to bet it had something to do with the mind-control techniques the woman used. Which was bad.

He decided it would be in his best interest to try and avoid that if he could, and counter-attack if at all possible. Lifting his semi-lamed leg, he rolled completely through one of the insubstantial clones and swung his kunai at the one that had made the shape with its hands. When it too disappeared he knew he had made a serious error. With something like horror he swivelled his head around, which gave him a fantastic view of a foot swinging in to fill his vision.

Two seconds later, he _knew_ his nose was broken.


	17. Bloodlines

Author's notes: Not as soon as I expected, but here it is. Besonderer Dank geht an: SunflowerIce.

**Disclaimer: I do not, have never, nor expect to ever own Naruto.**

* * *

Ino felt the crunch as Daruma's nose buckled under the force of the kick. It was a nasty feeling and sound, but amazingly satisfying at the same time. The momentum of the kick also snapped his neck back and sent him sprawling. His hands flew to his face, and the kunai sailed clear.

But she wasn't done yet. Daruma had proven multiple times that he was as tough as nails, and she didn't want to have to go through another altercation with him. She dropped to one knee, looked at him through the seal she formed with her hands, and took control.

'Ninpou: Shintenshin no Jutsu!' she caught the agonised expression on Daruma's face, before her soul shot forward to occupy his body. There was a moment where Daruma resisted her intrusion- not very well and unsuccessfully, which came as a surprise. Her imagination had been inflating him into such an unstoppable monster that his feeble attempts to fight her control was almost funny.

It stopped being funny at all when she gained control of his senses.

The first thing she noticed was the broken nose. She had expected that, but it was still an extraordinary amount of pain to receive so suddenly and she continued to cradle Daruma's face with his hands.

The leg was another matter. No god damned wonder Daruma hadn't been able to keep running or stand up. The whole thing felt like it was on fire, with a glaring hotspot around the area where Ino had hit him with the shuriken at Kimimaro's house. It refused to respond to instructions, and every attempt to move it produced a variety of strange feeling from various tendons and brief stabs of pain from the muscles around them. Ino rolled the body back onto its knees and tried to ignore the intense, sick feeling that seemed permeate Daruma's every pore. The must have been running on nothing but adrenaline and testosterone from the moment he made his escape. Ino half coughed and half gasped a shuddering exhalation that sent strings of blood and saliva flailing forwards from the hand that still clasped the broken nose and tried to remember where her body was.

This proved to be quite easy, but she had somehow managed to turn Daruma completely around and her own body was well out-of-reach. Fortunately she seemed to have collapsed as intended, years of practice ensuring that her unconscious form hadn't been injured in her absence. It only took a measure of uncomfortable crawling to reach her hip pouch and collect the makibishi she had left.

Drawing in a painful breath, Ino willed Daruma's body to rise. The injured leg remained stubborn, but she was able to stand using the spare. She carefully distributed the makibishi evenly in as large an area as she could manage, pulled a thick chord from her hip pouch before tossing it back towards her own body, and started tying Daruma's hands together. This was somewhat difficult, due to the fact that the hands she was binding were the only set she had to use at that moment, and using Daruma's teeth made the chord fairly slippery from all the blood still flowing freely from his nose.

When she was satisfied that she had restrained him properly, she manoeuvred Daruma to face away from the makibishi and jumped backwards just high enough to get him airborne. Then she left him to his fate, and returned to her own body.

As soon as her eyes opened, she turned to make sure Daruma was down. What she saw was both unexpected and massively irritating.

When people in Daruma's physical condition had their minds beaten into submission by Shintenshin no Jutsu, they often didn't regain consciousness for hours after the skill was cancelled. This was not one of those times. For some reason Daruma had been able to move immediately after she relinquished control of his body, and he had done the only things he could in that situation. He had, it seemed, managed to twist his body to the side in mid-air and let his disabled leg cushion the fall. It had landed on several makibishi and Daruma had to be in intense pain because of it, but he had resisted the temptation to scream because he was concentrating so hard on not having the same thing happen to the rest of his body. Though he had sacrificed his near-useless leg, and the way she had bound his hands prevented him from easily avoiding the rest of the spikes, he was desperately trying to balance on one elbow, which he had shoved resolutely into the clear space between three makibishi. His expression perfectly defined "working-under-pressure."

Ino couldn't take much more of this. She rose hurriedly, mindful of her broken arm, and lurched towards the struggling Daruma- who was even starting to try and chew through his bindings. She decided to vent some stress by screaming at him too.

'Why won't you just die already?!'

* * *

'What...what am I looking at here, Yuuki?' the leader of the Kirigakure party asked one of his subordinated and massaged his temples. Yuuki had her head titled to one side, a bland expression plastered across her face as she watched the antics of the two shinobi on the roof three hundred metres away.

'I think that's Shuu, and the Yamanaka from Konoha,' she suggested, curiosity evident in her voice. '...What do you think he's doing, Captain Matsushiro?'

Matsushiro buried his face in his hands and forced a deep breath between them. 'I have no idea,' he said eventually. Yuuki tilted her head in the opposite direction, as though this might give her some additional insight. When no insight was forthcoming, she frowned. The entire group watched the scene unfold for a little longer, until one of them had the presence of mind to suggest that Shuu probably wanted some help.

'Ah,' Yuuki said in surprise, having genuinely forgotten. 'That signal before was probably from him, wasn't it?'

'Now I remember why I keep you around,' Matsushiro said darkly. 'I could never have worked that out on my own.' A normal person might have detected the huge amount of sarcasm in the captain's voice, but Yuuki took the comment at face value.

'I'm always happy to be helpful, Captain,' she said with a warm smile, head still tilted at an angle. Matsushiro covered his face with a hand and sighed. He could already tell he wasn't going to enjoy hearing about exactly how Shuu had gotten himself in this situation.

'Alright, let's go then,' he said flatly and stood. He exploded out of the tree, and his entire party followed, zipping along behind him like the good boys and girls they were. And boys and girls they were; none of them were old enough to have fought in the Third Shinobi World War, and their inexperience was glaringly obvious to Matsushiro's eye. But, to give credit where it was due, they were exceptional compared to the soft-bodied incompetents the world had become used to since then.

He snorted at the thought and picked up the pace. The fact that none of the children following him fell behind was encouraging, but made Matsushiro wonder if he wasn't simply getting slow in his old age of thirty-four. He decided that bore thinking on, but put it to one side as they reached their target.

Shuu appeared to be teetering on the point of falling either backwards or forwards onto a medium-dispersal area of scattered makibishi, and his blonde opponent seemed intent on kicking him backwards in order to remove the element of uncertainty from the equation. Matsushiro landed on the rooftop softly, decades of experience unconsciously counteracting the pressure he exerted with his feet and muting the sound of the impact. The blonde Konoha kunoichi seemed to be aware of his presence, even before his marginally more clumsy companions landed beside him. She turned the momentum of the kick intended for Shuu into impetus to spin herself in his direction with commendable speed. But, she was far too late.

'Suiton: Suiben no Jutsu!' The rope of water snaked forwards in a blur of movement. The kunoichi tensed to defend herself, but the water shot past her and wrapped itself around Shuu's waist. Matsushiro flicked the whip back deftly and called a curt warning to his subordinate.

'Catch.'

Evidently unprepared for this, Yuuki failed to catch Shuu and both of them went down in a surprised, cursing heap. In an admirable attempt to save face for himself, his village, and his subordinates, Matsushiro pretended not to notice this, and stared the Yamanaka down resolutely.

'Well, well,' he said mildly, stepping forward and letting the tube of water collapse out of his hands, 'I was expecting my Kill Team to be back -or dead- by now, but this is a surprise.'

The kunoichi refused to rise to the comment and instead remained silent, which was undoubtedly the wisest choice. On the other hand, the fact that she took a small step backwards illustrated that she knew precisely how outnumbered she was. Without taking his eyes off her he gestured to his party's medic to see to Shuu, even while Yuuki was engaged in disentangling herself from and/or fighting him.

Though his directive to kill the woman was technically no longer relevant, the temptation to take a member of a prominent Konoha clan into custody was tempting in the extreme. He started to say something else, then closed his mouth with a click.

'Captain-' Yuuki began, taking her attention away from Shuu, before Matsushiro silenced her with a gesture of his hand. He hadn't wanted to give her any unnecessary hints but, between his odd verbal indecision and Yuuki's interrupted warning, the Yamanaka had noticed that there were others approaching. Friends of hers, he guessed, and decided that that explained how it was that Shuu had been in this position by himself and how he had lost his team-mates.

* * *

The second in which Kimimaro caught sight of Ino and the Kirigakure shinobi was the same second that he knew he would not be able to avoid detection. This was, of course, because they all seemed to be staring right at him at that precise moment. Kimimaro and the Konoha shinobi stopped running immediately.

'Well, they know we're here,' Shikamaru said in airy tones that were unsuitable to the situation, almost shouting in order to guarantee the Kirigakure shinobi heard him. The gesture he made with his hand was more subtle. Chouji and Naruto, the two people Kimimaro would have least expected to be able to remain unnoticed in this situation, had both been out of direct line-of-sight and disappeared into the streets below silently when they saw Shikamaru's hand move.

'This is bad,' he said much more quietly, still with an arrogantly confident smirk on his face for the Kirigakure shinobi to see. 'I count eighteen, not including Daruma.'

'Eighteen,' Sakura agreed, masking her own apprehension with a concentrated glare. Kimimaro's face remained carefully blank.

'Frankly, I think Daruma was enough trouble by himself.' Shikamaru studied the other group, trying to quickly figure out exactly what type of mood they were in. If they were willing to negotiate, so much the better, but they had a decidedly unfriendly feel about them. 'I am open to suggestions, by the way,' he added quietly.

The only thing that occurred to Kimimaro was to charge straight in and try to cause enough havoc to allow Ino to escape. The attractiveness of this plan was slightly degraded by the fact that it included the word "try." Eve his knee-jerk reactions could tell that eighteen Kirigakure shinobi would take exception to him trying something so crass.

As it happened, it seemed that the Kirigakure shinobi had their own ideas about how to deal with the situation. A man who appeared to be the leader and a woman, who appeared to have been trying to thump the living daylights out of Daruma when Kimimaro first saw her, approached Ino slowly. Ino, knowing that this was not the time for heroic actions, spoke to them briefly and allowed the woman to restrain her hands. Placing her into their custody, it seemed. The man then waived his hand at Shikamaru to indicate he was about to do something, then began making his way towards them while being careful to not make any sudden movements. His other accompaniment held their positions.

'Oh, looks like he wants to talk,' Sakura announced unnecessarily. Since the man was almost certainly within earshot now, Shikamaru refrained from trying to whisper anything else to either of them.

'"Nara," is it?' the man asked when he got close enough to talk, but not so close that they could take him hostage instantly. 'I was told you were the one to speak to.' He let the words hang in the air, inviting Shikamaru to contribute something, and taking the opportunity to take stock of the three youngsters before him. Kimimaro took the chance to do likewise.

The man was of about average height, he supposed, with jet-black hair that fell just past his shoulders. In keeping with tradition, his Kirikagure forehead protector was precisely positioned on his forehead above a weathered, suspicious face supporting a small beard and moustache. His eyes were black, or such a dark brown as to make it impossible to tell, and had a decidedly shrewd look to them. Kimimaro had the distinct impression that he did a slight double-take when their eyes met, but he found himself second-guessing the impression when the man didn't so much as bat an eyelid before turning back to Shikamaru.

'"Nara" will do fine,' Shikamaru confirmed his last name with some reluctance. 'And who am I talking to?'

'I am Matsushiro Tomoya. Address me however you like, Nara-kun.' Shikamaru bristled a little at that -apparently he didn't like being called by his family name either- but Matsushiro continued before he could say anything.

'Whether you realise it or not, you have something I need. But because I'm a busy and tolerant man, I'm willing to exchange your friend for them,' he gestured back at Ino, just to be sure there was no confusion about who their "friend" was.

'And what is it that you want?' Shikamaru asked plainly, becoming less and less comfortable with Matsushiro's negotiating tactics. And again, Kimimaro could swear the Kirigakure shinobi's eyes flicked over him again.

'Two things, actually: information and a weapon I believe you have in your possession.' Again his eyes darted to look at Kimimaro for a split-second. 'First, the information: it would seem that you have made the acquaintance of one of my subordinates, Aoyama Shuu.' He paused to see if the name registered, but continued after seeing their looks of non-recognition and dawning realisation. It was impossible to tell from his immobile expression if the fact that "Daruma" had never given them his real name pleased Matsushiro or not.

'When I sent him away he had two others with him. I would like to know where I might locate their bodies.' This time when he looked at Kimimaro he held his gaze for a few seconds while he spoke. 'Kirikagure takes care of it's own.' If there was some kind of veiled threat there, Kimimaro tried very hard to ignore it.

'Also, on that point' Matsushiro interrupted Shikamaru's response. 'One of them was carrying a rather curious weapon- hence my second request.' Rather than reply verbally, Shikamaru began to slowly and deliberately remove the dagger from behind his hip-pouch, where he had put it for safe keeping. It had been wrapped for security rather than easy-access, having very quickly realised he couldn't use it effectively and had a tendency to blind them by accident, so his prolonged fumbling gave Sakura the chance to ask a very undiplomatic question.

'How do we know you won't just kill us after we give you what you want?'

Matsushiro gave her a very slow look before answering. 'You don't,' he said simply. 'But I might point out that I probably could have gotten the information from your friend over there,' again he gestured to Ino, 'and gotten the weapon after killing you five.'

The casual implication that he was aware of Naruto and Chouji's attempts to remain hidden seemed to settle the matter. Sakura became a few shades paler, and Shikamaru hastened his efforts to recover the over-wrapped dagger. And since the bodies were still near his house, Kimimaro tried to work out the best set of directions he could think of.


End file.
